Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Wildflower was the buzz of Boca in the ’80s
It reigned for 20 years, but future of site up for grabs
BOCARATON— The dance floor was circular and suspended. The backdrop was splashed in aqua and pink with plush, patterned carpeting. The crowd moved to the pounding beat of songs like “IWant Candy” with big hair, sequins and neon.
By all accounts, Boca Raton’s Wildflower nightclub was like the set of “Miami Vice” brought to real and raucous life.
Now, more than a decade since the party buzz ended just north of the intersection of Boca’s main thoroughfare and the Intracoastal Waterway, the city is about to start entertaining formal proposals for some sort of restaurant destination on the waterfront.
But for those who partied in the heyday of the Wildflower, nothing that goes there could quite match the club that some say put Boca Raton on the map.
“Just like Woodstock, they might try, but there will never be another,” said Carolyn Klemow, 60, of Boca Raton, who recalls hitting the Wildflower three times aweek in the early 1980s. “The big hair, the flamboyant clothes. Itwas just wild.”
Glenn Gromann, a Boca land-use attorney whowas living in Miami in the 1980s,
said: “Itwas one of those iconic places that you had to go if you were in Boca. People were wearing white suits, driving Ferraris.”
At that time, Boca was in the early stage of the boom that included Florida Atlantic University being built on the old army airfield and IBM Corp.’s sprawling headquarters, where the first personal computer was born in 1982. And the whole country was re-discovering South Florida via prime-time TV.
James Previti, 57, whowas working at the Wildflower on opening day, remembers seeing a few guys who could have been the inspiration for an antagonist of Sonny Crockett, the uber-hip cop played by Don Johnson on “Miami Vice” during its run from 1984 to 1990.
“I used towork the door and people would tip me $100 to get in,” said Previti, who alsoworked as a barback. “You would see these guys you knew were drug dealers with their bag phones. Theywere these big, bulky things that probably weighed 20 pounds.” “Itwas comical,” he chuckled. Boca had never had a nightclub quite like this: Five bars in one building. Different floors catered to different moods. Cocktail waitresses dressed in sarong-covered, one-piece bathing suits with feathers clipped into their hair so they cascaded to their shoulders. Katie Barr, of Boca Raton, was the hostess on opening night in 1980. Shewas 19.
“Itwas unbelievable— like being in a Broadway show— the doors opened and people flooded in,” she said. “Itwas magical— all the stars aligned for this to be the perfect time for people to be out and about.”
Just north of Lake Boca Raton, Wildflower’s location has played a part in Boca’s history. Itwas home to the Palmetto Plantation, a banana plantation with a house that was built in 1915, according to records at the Boca Raton Historical Society& Museum. Eventually, the plantation’s name became the name of the city’s main thoroughfare, Palmetto Park Road.
The Wildflower was popular enough that in 1992, Sun Sentinel nightclub columnist Jeremy Lang called it “a perennial” among the area’s nightclubs, But as the ’90s wore on, things started to peter out. By 2003, the former hot spot had failed twice as “Bex” and “Wild wood Grill.”
As the weeds grew and the concrete became pock-marked, the Wildflower became a code enforcement issue. The old buildingwas demolished in 2009, before the city purchased the 2.27-acre property for $7.5 million.
In 2011, Boca invited developers, business owners and residents to submit letters of interest for what should be done with the site. And it got suggestions ranging from apartments to restaurants to a multi-vendor marketplace. But nothing produced any consensus among City Council members, said Mike Mullaugh, a member of the council.
“This is a unique piece of property and nothing we saw really fired us up,” he said.
Thanks in part to a better economy and more residential growth in the area, Boca is hoping for better luck this time around as it solicits formal plans for that spot on the waterfront— although no one expects the old Wild flower to reincarnate.
That’s fine with Mayor Susan Whelchel. Shewould like to see something with more family appeal at the site.
“I don’t think you can ever bring back the past,” she said, adding that she had been to the old Wild flower a time or two. “You have to create a new future.”
But just the mention of the old Wildflower has people— of a certain age, anyway— basking in their favorite party memories.
Patty Dervishi, 66, of Boca Raton, met her ex-husband at the Wildflower and remembers more than a few wild times. One night he fell off the second floor into a planter on the first floor. The best part was that you never knew who you would meet and in what condition.
“Itwas the era of excess,” she said. “The bartenders went out of their way to get the women drunk.”
Therewere also celebrity sightings. Carol Potter-Jones, now living in Coral Springs, recalls serving champagne to Lynda Carter, aka “Wonder Woman.” In her sarong and bathing suit, Barr says she waited on singer Joe Cocker, and they hit the after hours clubs together just before he recorded the hit “Up Where We Belong.”
Barr also met her husband, who is nowdeceased, at the Wildflower.
“Hewas there with a date,” she recalled. “He came back into the service bar, told me how beautiful Iwas and he asked formy number. I said, ‘Howd are you!’ ”
But he pursued her. And dancing with him at the Wildflower is one of the memories that makes her smile. Her husband once got up on one of the beams supporting the suspended dance floor and started shimmying around, she said.
“He could have fallen into the crowd below at any moment,” she said. “At the Wildflower, you never knew what to expect next.”