Calmer Crowd at Boca’s Government Campus Charette

By Marci Shatzman

Boca residents listened attentively with only one shoutout at the city’s latest charette for the proposed design for a new downtown government campus. A nearly full house in the 279-seat theater in The Studio at Mizner Park heard speakers lay out revised plans, backed by a large screen with streetscape graphs and renderings.

Feedback after an earlier charette and design has centered around keeping the Boca Raton Tennis Center intact and the city’s skate park and some playing fields downtown. Residents speaking at previous public meetings have cited concerns about traffic and residential density. Those issues came up again at this session the evening of Monday April 28.

“We promised we would incorporate all feedback,” said Rob Frisbie Jr., a principal in the Terre & Frisbie Group that city council has chose for a private partnership so far.

This presentation showed tennis courts with amenities and other recreation on 2^nd Street and Crawford Boulevard. The revised plans includes 20% more green space with 200 fewer residential units, Frisbie said. He called residential buildings “revenue generators alleviating the need for the city to raise taxes,” he said to answer an audience question. The city’s consultant Kimley-Horn is “working on a traffic study,” he added about concern over the addition of new residents traveling on downtown roads. The new design has 3,000 parking spaces in garages and street parking, he added.

Frisbie said there are no plans for hi-rise buildings. “We’re keeping the height to what is legally allowed,” he said. “We are focusing on city stores you would go to every day,” including grab-and-go food and beverage, he said to answer how retail and restaurants would afford the rent in the new complex.

Most of the presentation focused on connectivity, intersections with bicycle lanes, playgrounds, parks and green public spaces with elaborate landscaping that would include shading from existing banyan trees and a canopy of new trees.

After the Q&A, a few residents stayed for one-on-one questions, including Dan Guin, the artistic director of Boca Ballet Theatre and head of the cultural consortium. In an interview, he noted there are no plans for a much-needed performing arts space. His company has had to perform in school auditoriums for decades. He said plans for a new community center could include a theater. The city just stepped aside from a landlord agreement to build a performing arts space on a vacant field next to the city’s open air Mizner Park Amphitheater.

Mayor Scott Singer reminded attendees that the city has had 21 or 22 meetings with a public comment section and the timeline allows for more resident feedback. He called the new government campus “another version of a civic square that doesn’t shut down at 5 p.m.” The city has dedicated part of its website to the downtown government campus plans. https://myboca.us/1431/Government-Campus