Downtown Boca Raton has gotten
a lot of attention lately.
Development
Services Director Jorge Camejo said the new
Dowtown Boca Raton Advisory Committee held its
first meeting last week, electing Lynne Novick as
chairwoman and Michelle Bellisari as vice
chairwoman.
The panel held a lunch meeting
Wednesday in City Hall with Ray Gindroz, the newly
hired consultant working on downtown development,
“This will be the group’s first endeavor, to
participate in a planning workshop,” Camejo
said.
A public meeting on downtown
development followed that evening at the Community
Center.
Also meeting this week – Tuesday
night, just before its regular meeting – was the
Community Appearance Board and others interested
in the future of downtown – including
Gindroz.
Charrette
meeting
Camejo said this
flurry of activity leads up to a four-day
“charrette” meeting May 1-4 for the creation of a
downtown development plan. A “charrette” is akin
to a master plan for a certain area. A
“charrette” was created several years ago for the
rehabilitation of the North Federal Highway
corridor.
Several items will be in the
hopper. The city itself is in the middle of
studying proposals for a pedestrian “spine” that
would connect Mizner Park on the north end of the
downtown with Royal Palm Place on the southern
end.
Boca hired Gindroz to work with
officials.
The “spine” is designed to
enliven and revive the city’s central business
district. Camejo has created a timeline that shows
potential completion by the year 2010.
The
new Downtown Boca Raton Advisory Board is coming
in as the effort to create a “spine” begins to
ramp up.
In addition to Novick and
Bellisari, members of the new board are Mary Csar,
Leo Fox, Glenn Gromann, Bruce Retzsch, Clemens
Storch, Derek Vander Ploeg and Dawn
Zook.
‘Energetic’
Committee
Councilman Peter
Baronoff, who proposed setting up the board to
pick up where the former Downtown Visions
Committee left off, said he and Deputy Mayor Susan
Whelchel attended the panel’s first meeting last
week. “We put together one energetic,
positive committee,” he told his council
colleagues at a meeting this week.
For the
past year, city officials have been working
earnestly on a “spine.” In his timeline,
Camejo said the design phase will likely begin
during the second quarter of 2008 and conclude by
the end of 2009. The engineering and
construction phase is set to finish by
2010.
The city is encouraging private
development of the “spine” as Camejo said it’s
likely to cost $30 million.
One veteran
city developer, Tom Crocker, has put a plan on the
table.
During a recent presentation to the
City Council, sitting as the Community
Redevelopment Agency, he proposed to embellish the
“spine” with retail, restaurants and office
space. Crocker’s proposal re-emphasizes a
couple of downtown venues that he said have
“fallen into the background.”
The CEO of
Crocker Partners said his proposal will close the
gap between the two major shopping areas; place
offices, shops, restaurants, residences and a
hotel along the spine and “give greater prominence
to the city’s existing Sanborn Square and to Old
Town Hall, a historic landmark.”
Dale
M. King can be reached at 561-549-0832 or at
dking@bocanews.com.
