Lake Worth Starbucks delayed
LAKE WORTH — The new Starbucks at Downtown Lake Worth, the $2 million North Dixie Highway shopping center, will open in early summer, not late April, the company said.
“Choosing a site for a new Starbucks location is a key element in providing customers with the Starbucks experience and we carefully consider many factors when opening a new store,” the company said in an email to The Palm Beach Post Monday night.
Starbucks said all employees from the Lake Avenue location in downtown Lake Worth will be transferring to the new location.
Norman Weinstein, president of Stateside Partners, the Boca Raton company behind the venture, told The Post last week Starbucks would open in late April.
Weinstein did not return a call for an additional comment.
He told The Post last week Starbucks would be a great store for any retail center. “They’re a great complement with other tenants because they do generate a lot of interest,” he said.
Weinstein has said T-Mobile, a nail spa and Dr. G’s Urgent Care also will open at the site. He said T-Mobile will move in late April, while the nail spa and the urgent care center should be ready by May.
The project started last year when City Hall Coin Laundry was demolished to make way for the 8,750-square-foot center.
For many years, residents have complained that the Lake Worth Community Redevelopment Agency has neglected developing the Dixie Highway corridor.
Last year, Joan Oliva, the CRA’s executive director, told The Post it’s always a struggle to get properties on Dixie Highway because of the cost and 30-foot height limit.
“It hampers what you can put on the site,” she said.
The city is also battling the issue of crime and prostitution along Dixie Highway. But Weinstein has said he has been “proactive” in dealing with those problems and that he didn’t have any problems investing in Lake Worth.
“We’ll be looking for another project as soon as we finish this one,” Weinstein said. “We’d like to do something in Lake Worth, but we do stuff in other places, too.”