Whelchel to revive effort to secure Wildflower property

By Dale M. King
CITY EDITOR

It’s an annual rite of spring.

Around this time every year, the city manager, mayor, city council and department heads spent the better part of two days poring over documents, offering ideas, listing priorities, relisting them and coming up with a roster of goals for the coming fiscal year.

City Manager Leif Ahnell then uses that list to come up with priorities for the 2008-2009 budget that should be on the desks of city council members by mid- to late summer.

For the first time in seven years, Steven Abrams will not be sitting in the mayor’s seat. Successor Susan Whelchel has that task. And she also has a list of proposals – including a plan to revive efforts to acquire the Wildflower property on East Palmetto Park Road, just north of the Intracoastal Bridge.

Wants Wildflower

Even though city leaders have generally ruled out the acquisition due to the cost of the property and the lack of money in city coffers, the Wildflower acquisition made it onto the “high priority” list in last year’s budget.  And Whelchel said she wants to give it another shot.

She told the Boca Raton News it’s part of her “visionary” look at bringing “downtown to the Intracoastal.”

The Wildflower, once a favorite spot for drinking and socializing – has been closed for about a decade.  There was one attempt several years ago to reopen it, but the effort failed.

The city – and at one time, the county – sought the land for construction of a park and to expand the number of boat ramps that access the Intracoastal. Both government entities cited shortages of money.

Actually, Whelchel said, she wants to see the council, city manager and department heads to begin looking at implementing downtown improvements proposed by a consultant the city hired last year.

Pedestrian Friendly

She said she wants the city’s business center to be “a 100 percent pedestrian friendly downtown.”

Still on the table is the proposal for a walkway – called “the spine” – that would connect Royal Palm Place with Mizner Park.  A “downtown vision and plan” were ranked as top priorities following last year’s goal-setting meetings.

Whelchel said she hopes the two days of meetings will “reinforce the goals of last year.”

Top priorities last year also included a workforce hosing policy, a strategy for Florida Atlantic University and the Boca Raton Community Hospital project that will result in construction of a new teaching hospital on the FAU site.

“High priority” items from last year include guidelines for Light Industrial Research Park (LIRP) zoning, the I-95 interchange at FAU and retirement and pension cost containment.

City Councilman Peter Baronoff, who has been pushing the issue of branding the city, said he will bring that up.  The plan may make a little more headway since Abrams, who is now gone, was branding’s biggest foe.

Goal setting sessions began Thursday and will continue today at 9 a.m. in the 6500 Building at 6500 Congress Ave.