Boca Raton’s city council members are moving forward with legislation to require voter approval of any future deal involving city-owned land larger than half an acre.
The disclosure was made just before midnight during Boca Raton’s April 14 meeting, where the council also voted to create a committee on what to do with 30 acres of public land where Terra and Frisbie Group’s plans for One Boca were shot down by voters.
In a city election last month, 74.5% of voters rejected plans by Miami-based Terra and Palm Beach-based Frisbie to build the mixed-use project on the 7.8-acre tract just south of Brightline Boca Raton Station and east of Memorial Park.
Andy Thomson, the council’s lone critic of Terra and Frisbie’s One Boca plan, was elected mayor, and Save Boca founder Jon Pearlman, and Save Boca-backed candidates Michelle Grau and Stacy Sipple were elected as city council candidates in the same election, representing a shift on the previously pro-development council.
The council voted 3-1 to create the Downtown Civic Engagement Task Force. It will consist of nine members appointed by the city council to determine how to improve the former One Boca site as well as the rest of Boca Raton’s government campus, which includes the 17-acre Memorial Park, an outdated community center and the city’s aging city hall.
Under the scuttled development agreement for One Boca, city officials had the option to hire Terra and Frisbie to build a new city hall and community center and improve Memorial Park. The One Boca rejection leaves city officials to figure out how to improve its public facilities without partnering with a developer, Thomson told council members.
But Pearlman, the lone dissenting vote, said they don’t need to appoint “an unelected blue-ribbon commission” to figure out what to do with the city properties.
Pearlman called for an ordinance and charter amendment that would require voter approval of any sale or lease of city-owned land larger than half an acre.
Amid a heated debate, City Attorney Joshua Koehler told council members that he can have such an ordinance drafted later this month. The change likely would require voter approval. Palm Beach County elections don’t allow special elections, and the soonest regular election is next March.
