The Boca Raton City Council agreed to wait for a voter referendum before formally approving a 99-year lease that would enable Miami-based Terra and Palm Beach-based Frisbie Group to build apartments, condos, retail, and offices on public land.
On Tuesday evening, elected officials instructed the city attorney to add in a referendum clause to any proposed lease after hearing from dozens of residents who demanded a special election on the latest plans by Terra and Frisbie to build on 30 acres of city-owned land at West Palmetto Park Road and Northwest Second Avenue.
Under the revised plan, Terra and Frisbie would build 580 apartments, 160 condos, 80,000 square feet of retail, and 250,000 square feet of offices along with a redesigned Memorial Park, a new city hall and community center and other public improvements.
Frisbie managing partner Rob Frisbie, Jr. and Terra CEO David Martin said the new design is far less dense than their earlier 1.5-million-square-foot proposed project that included 912 residential units, 150 hotel rooms, 350,000 square feet of offices and 152,000 square feet of retail.
Frisbie told council members the developers downsized their project and added more green space in response to residents who appeared a week prior at city hall in droves to oppose the mega-development. He also said he was not against holding a referendum and agreed to hold public workshops with residents on Sept. 29 at the city’s downtown library and on Oct. 6 at the Spanish River Library, both at 4 p.m. Plus, Frisbie said his team was eager to meet with local homeowners’ associations and would not push for a development agreement to be approved by late October, as the city originally scheduled.
“We need to get the community behind this project,” Frisbie told council members. “This is a [really] exciting plan and they should get to vote on it.”
Besides removing the hotel concept and reducing the number of units and retail space, the new Terra-Frisbie plan includes a new tennis center with up to 10 clay courts, a playground that will incorporate banyan trees on site, a World War II memorial and a new children’s museum.
A reduced site plan, though, also means less money for the city in terms of rent and taxes. Under the larger plan, the developers said they would pay out about $3 billion over the course of the 99-year lease. Through the scaled-down plans, the developers would pay the city about $2.1 billion. Terra and Frisbie would also obtain a developer fee for building a new city hall and other public facilities, although Frisbie said his team was still committed to providing $10 million for a pedestrian bridge near Brightline’s Boca Raton station between the government campus and Mizner Park.
But the new concessions did little to dissuade opposition from critics who now collected 7,000 signatures for an ordinance or charter amendment that would require a public vote prior to the sale or leasing of more than a half-acre of public land. About 1,000 of those signatures were collected over the weekend when Boca Raton was hit with torrential storms, said Jon Pearlman, founder of Save Boca.
“Right now, the land is public. They want to get it into their possession. And once they get it, they will have full control over it for the next 99 years,” Pearlman said.
Several residents said they would rather the city renovate or replace city hall and other public facilities on its own, without handing over public land and attracting more traffic that would ruin Boca Raton’s small town appeal. In addition, the present plans still include moving some of Memorial Park’s recreational facilities, such as its two softball fields, to other parts of the city.
In February, Terra and Frisbie beat out West Palm Beach-based Related Ross and two other development teams in a city bid for the redevelopment of Boca Raton’s “government campus” area. At the time, the Terra-Frisbie project was 2.5 million square feet and included 1,129 residential units.
Aside from that project, Terra and Frisbie are also moving forward with redeveloping the Palm Beach Kennel Club site in Palm Beach County with as many as 1,145 apartments.
Boca Raton and nearby West Boca Raton have attracted increased attention from developers. Among developments moving forward is a $101 million, 306-unit apartment project that is slated to be built by Mill Creek and Group P6 in downtown Boca Raton. Local developers James and Marta Batmasian also received the backing of the Boca Raton Planning and Zoning Board to build two 12-story hotel towers by Mizner Park.