Boynton Beach sees hope for undeveloped eyesore - Palm Beach Post

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Damon Higgins/Palm Beach Post

Grace Marquez, co-owner of FSB men's store on Ocean Avenue in downtown Boynton, is eager for the lot across the street to be developed. Shops at the site were razed six years ago.

By Eliot Kleinberg

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 5:58 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 2, 2011

Posted: 5:44 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 2, 2011

BOYNTON BEACH — As depressing eyesores go, you couldn't do much worse than 500 East Ocean.

It's not that the lot, along North Federal Highway and south of Ocean Avenue, is full of junked cars or trash. Rather, it's 4.7 downtown acres that, in the heady days of the boom, would have made a developer drool.

Six years after mom-and-pop shops were razed to make way for a grand village of condominiums, apartments, restaurants and shops, nothing is there.

This summer, it fell to a foreclosure judgment.

Now, a bank official says the site is under contract and a deal could be closed by the end of the year.

That couldn't come soon enough for the city's Community Redevelopment Agency. It sees the site as part of a grand vision of Boynton Beach as a destination.

"We're very encouraged. That means somebody's hopefully going to do something with it," CRA Executive Director Vivian Brooks said last week . "It's a very large site, and it's on our key intersection downtown."

It couldn't come too soon for neighbors.

"The empty lot makes it look like a ghost town," said Grace Marquez, co-­owner of FSB men's store across the street. "Especially over all these years."

As far back as the 1990s, city leaders envisioned a "specialty marketplace."

In 2002, Boynton Ventures I LLC, a partnership that included former West Palm Beach Mayor Nancy Graham, agreed to buy the parcel from investor Christiane Francois.

The $105 million The Arches would feature 76 residential units, 40,500 square feet of retail space and 12,000 square feet of commercial space.

In July 2004, Francois posted a chain link fence around the lot and told about two dozen tenants to be out in 90 days.

"We had some nice neighbors across the street," Marquez said. "We were a little community."

Later that year, Francois refused to sell, saying Boynton Ventures was a day late in exercising its option. Graham sued, and a judge forced the sale.

Graham and her husband later sold their interest to business partner Ryan Weisfisch. But nothing happened, and that led to the foreclosure.

This year, PNC Bank, holding a $16.9 million loan, won a foreclosure judgment. With more than $2 million in interest, late charges and legal fees, the total was $20.34 million.

In July, Capstone Resdev, a PNC subsidiary, bought the site at auction.

Bob Gassie, an Orlando-based Capstone vice president, confirmed the contract but would not divulge the buyer and didn't know what's planned.

For now, store owner Marquez still looks at an empty field. She said her strip installed awnings for a quaint look, "but with nothing across the street, it's tough."