Saga goes on over historic home sitting empty
CRA wants to take building back from Shovel Ready Projects.
BOYNTON BEACH — The Community Redevelopment Agency wants the Oscar Magnuson home back. The developer that owns it said sure, but in exchange for $50,000.
The site is the historic cottage at 211 E. Ocean Ave. that the CRA sold to Shovel Ready Projects more than two years ago to turn it into a restaurant. The CRA board, which is the City Commission, has gone back and forth with Shovel Ready over a lack of progress.
Most recently, the board gave Shovel Ready an extension to the deadline of when the company needed to obtain its building permit. But the CRA says the company did not meet that May 14 deadline, and sent the group a notice of default, telling them they had 30 days to return the property’s deed to the CRA. The CRA would then refund the company the $255,000 purchase price.
But Shovel Ready is pushing back.
The company responded to the CRA Friday with an option: give us an extension for the project or pay $50,000, plus the $255,000, for project expenses and we’ll give you the property back.
The board is expected to decide at today’s CRA meeting.
Commissioner Justin Katz said the CRA isn’t obligated to pay Shovel Ready anything more than the price it paid for the property.
“We’ve wasted years where that property could have been developed or other alternative ideas could have been put forth and they just sat on it,” he said.
Shovel Ready said it is not in default, according to a May 24 email from attorney Thomas Carney, Delray Beach’s mayor for three months in 2013. The letter also said while Shovel Ready wants to avoid litigation, if the $50,000 is not paid, it doesn’t “intend to suffer the consequences of inequitable, plainly wrong, treatment.”
But according to the CRA, Shovel Ready agreed, if unable to obtain the permit by the May 14 deadline, it would agree to the terms of the reverter clause without protest.