Beztak, Wexford Propose Expansion of Boca Raton Apt Project

A joint venture between Beztak and Wexford Real Estate secured approval from Boca Raton’s Planning and Zoning Board to expand their previously approved apartment project.

The approval allows Farmington Hills, Michigan-based Beztak and West Palm Beach-based Wexford to add 21 additional apartments, a fitness center and a private school to the development, which will be built inside the 21.4-acre Amtec Center business park at 6401 to 6421 Congress Avenue in Boca Raton.

The project, called Bocora, was previously approved as an eight-story, 277-unit building. The Boca Raton City Council will next vote on the expansion, which the planning and zoning board greenlit at its meeting on Thursday.

In exchange for the extra units, the developers offered to reserve four apartments for affordable housing and include a 2,086-square-foot fitness facility. The city’s commercial industrial multifamily development (CIMD) ordinance allows developers to ask for additional residential units to be built in light-industrial areas such as the Amtec Center in exchange for attainable housing and new retail.

Beztak, Wexford Propose Expansion of Boca Raton Apt Project — Site plan of Amtec Center office park depicting sites of future apartments, fitness center and school (Arcadis)

Amtec Center’s owners also want conditional use approval for a 2,000-square-foot school for 100 students within an existing office building on site. The request would allow Xceed Preparatory Academy, which operates a hybrid tutoring facility in an Amtec Center office building, to accept school vouchers, said the project’s attorney, Ele Zachariades.

Jon Ounjian, owner of an office building just north of the Amtec Center, opposed the additional units. Ounjian pointed out that the apartments will be built on a 4-acre portion of the office park. Ounjian said Bocora’s vehicular traffic will adversely affect his property unless a turn lane is added.

Board members and planning staff were concerned that the project’s planned fitness center was an amenity for Bocora residents that is being used to “check a box” for the CMID retail requirement. Board member Timothy Dornblaser said this is part of a larger pattern where developers prefer to build more residential without retail or restaurant space.

“All these apartments that are going up [have] no retail, so every time someone wants a cup of coffee or breakfast or something, they are leaving the site,” Dornblaser said.

Development services director Brandon Schaad said the fitness center will be required to be open to the public and staffed at least 60 hours a week. An independent business separate from the developers will operate the gym, as required by CIMD, otherwise the developers may be fined or sued by the city.

Zachariades said there will not be any need for staff since members will have a key pass to get in. “It’s a small boutique gym. Most of them don’t have staff at all,” she said.

Schaad said that will be determined by the time the zoning item reaches the city council. “Unstaffed commercial gyms are a real thing in the world, but I’m not familiar with them,” he said.

Beztak, led by Sam Beznos, and Wexford, led by Joseph Jacobs and Philip Braunstein, announced plans for Bocora in late 2021, soon after an affiliate of Beztak acquired the northwestern portion of the Amtec Center for $12.7 million. Jupiter-based Catexor, led by Stig and Britt Wennerstrom, sold the 4-acre site. Catexor still owns the remaining 17.3 acres at the Amtec Center, including its mid-1980s office buildings.

Boca Raton has become a hot spot for development and land investment.

In July, the Related Group paid $50 million for a 10-acre piece of the Office Depot Campus where Related, PEBB Enterprises and BH Group are redeveloping part of the office complex into a mixed-use community with 500 apartments, 43,000 square feet of retail and a 36,400-square-foot fitness center. That same month, Group P6 and Mill Creek Residential won approval to build a 306-unit apartment building in the downtown area from Boca Raton’s Community Redevelopment Agency. In August, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints paid $152.5 million for the 384-unit Del Ola apartment complex, and that month the Boca Raton planning board backed James and Marta Batmasians’ plans to build a 12-story, 242-room hotel near Mizner Park.

Some residents are opposing new projects. Late last month, residents collected thousands of signatures demanding a referendum on a proposed 1.5-million square foot project by Terra Group and Frisbie Group on 31 acres of public land.