Residents save the day in Delray
Some residents of Delray Beach scored a satisfying victory this month by standing firm against a real head-scratcher of a development deal that would have had major consequences for their community.
Mayor Shelly Petrolia puzzled many in pushing for a sale of three city blocks on West Atlantic Avenue at a 90 percent discount to a developer who had failed to deliver one time before.
Luckily, opponents flooded City Hall with determination and a slew of better arguments.
Petrolia had been ready to accept a net $1.6 million for land valued at $15.4 million, even though six other developers had sent the city letters of intent, each willing to pay more — in one case, as much as $6 million. This, to a developer, John Flynn, a part-time resident of Palm Beach Gardens from Ireland, who has never built anything in the United States.
The questionable deal seemed out of character for Petrolia, who as a city commission candidate in 2013 had made a big issue out of the lack of competitive bidding on the city’s trash-hauling contract. Later, she fiercely criticized the price paid by the under-construction iPic movie theater for the downtown land where the old city library stood.
The West Atlantic project at issue is of vital importance to the long-overlooked, largely African-American and Caribbean-American neighborhoods west of Swinton Avenue. It’s meant to bring a quality supermarket to the area for the first time. It’s meant to deliver a measure of equity that’s been lacking while the downtown east of Swinton has been prospering, thanks largely to the lavish attentions of Delray’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA).
In 2013, the CRA, now focused on the languishing West Atlantic stretch, engaged Flynn’s company, then called Equity Delray, to develop a grocery (Publix, hopefully) in a $35 million complex complete with shops and affordable housing on the 6 acres that the CRA had amassed over the course of seven years by paying more than $7 million.
But Equity failed to produce financing. Three wasted years later, the CRA ended the deal.
This March, Petrolia was elected mayor. And at the new commission’s first meeting, she and her allies pulled a huge surprise. They voted 4-1 to take over the CRA, which for more than 30 years had been an independent, volunteer board. The past city commission had threatened this move as well, but had backed off when the CRA showed signs of responding to complaints, chiefly over its slow pace in making improvements outside of downtown Delray.
The CRA takeover hadn’t been an issue in the mayor’s race. But now, suddenly, Petrolia was not only the mayor, she was chairman of the CRA.
Then another surprise. The newly reconstituted CRA board announced, in May, that Flynn’s company was back in the picture. Petrolia’s rationale: by already having site plan approvals, the renamed Uptown Atlantic could get the job done faster than anyone else.
But residents — rightly — weren’t buying it. “Why give away tax dollars to a developer?” asked resident Timothy Boykin. Former Mayor Cary Glickstein said: “It doesn’t pass the smell test that a developer that really embarrassed and failed the city before is being given a second opportunity.” The Downtown Development Authority, the city’s Chamber of Commerce and Palm Beach County Tax Collector Ann Gannon all called for a bidding process.
To many in the minority community, it felt like a reprise of a battle late last year, when a temporary commission seat came open after former Vice Mayor Al Jacquet became a state representative. Petrolia and then-Commissioner Mitch Katz refused to vote for the candidate heavily favored by residents. Petrolia said she wouldn’t submit to “pressure ... from members of the community who believe they know better than me.”
Well, here we are again.
This whole episode reeks of heavy-handed leadership that acts disdainful of the people in the community most affected by the results. It was a bad misstep for a new mayor. And it leaves many wondering if undisclosed politics lay behind the fixation on Uptown Atlantic.
We hope that’s not the case. And that the mayor sets ego aside, and rightly views this as a teachable moment.
Better to take the time, listen to the residents, and get this project right.
The mayor had been ready to accept a net $1.6 million for land valued at $15.4 million, even though six other developers had sent the city letters of intent, each willing to pay more.