Restaurants upset Boynton officials
Commission set to call off one deal if building does not start soon.
BOYNTON BEACH — Boynton Beach officials more than two years ago sold two historic properties on Ocean Avenue so they could be redeveloped into restaurants, and planned that the new retail would spur development.
The restaurants still haven’t opened, but the development has happened without them — 500 Ocean residential and retail at Ocean and Federal Highway is open and nearly complete. Still, the repeated delays with the restaurants have frustrated city commissioners.
“You haven’t put one nail, one board, not one shovel in the ground,” Commissioner Joe Casello told the owner of 211 E. Ocean Ave. at a recent Community Redevelopment Agency meeting. “You’ve been sitting on it like an investment-type property.”
This month, commissioners told the owners of that property that if they don’t start construction within 60 days, the CRA, which sold the property, will call off the deal.
Meanwhile, the restaurant at 480 E. Ocean Ave. should be open
its stereotype.
That’s a step toward putting resources to work addressing the problem.
But the resources have been slow to come. Muoio noted recently that the city has no beds for the homeless, other than the county’s Lewis Center on 45th Street, which is usually full. The county was supposed to have three such facilities but only has one, she said.
West Palm Beach has several programs aimed at reaching out to the city’s homeless population, finding housing or connecting them with nonprofits for supportive services, but Muoio and county officials remain under pressure to do more, particularly from downtown merchants and residents who’ve steadily complained about crime and panhandling.
“We need to come together as a community and not tolerate that someone is sleeping on the sidewalk,” said Diana Stanley, CEO of The Lord’s Place.
The SleepOut, the major annual event and fundraiser for The Lord’s Place, takes place April 6 at the United Methodist Church of the Palm Beaches, 900 Brandywine Road. It starts with a silent auction at 6 p.m., followed by, as the name implies, a camp-out to give a sense of what the homeless go through daily. (For information on that event, call 561-578-4928.)