By The Palm Beach Post
Posted: 6:48 p.m. Friday, Feb. 19, 2010
Basically, Boynton Beach traded a strip club and a dead mall for a Walmart and got criticized. The city correctly ignored the criticism.
For several years, Boynton Beach has tried to spruce up the southern gateway to the city, at Gulfstream Boulevard along U.S. 1. In 2004, rapper Eminem wouldn't send his D-12 band to what then was called Club Ovation in the Gulfstream Mall, because of violence at the club during hip-hop performances. A year later, the plan was to put housing on the mall property, but the real estate crash took care of that. Another image problem for the area was the Platinum Gold strip club.
Yet last week, before giving final approval to Wal-Mart for a store on the 9.3 acres that were home to the mall and Platinum Gold, the Boynton Beach City Commission heard three hours of worries about crime and other potential problems from people who live near the site. Where were they in 2004? As studies show, most crime will happen inside the store, with people trying to shoplift. Since much of the opposition came from Gulf Stream, the wealthy enclave that for the most part is separated by the Intracoastal Waterway from the site, maybe a Nordstrom would have aroused less opposition.
Still, based on negotiations between the city and the company, this won't be your average Walmart. The company agreed to all of the city's 33 design conditions, and the roughly 93,000-square-foot store will feature a snappy urban look with exterior, tropical-themed artwork. Sixteen-foot trees will surround parts of the property. Oh, and the land is zoned for this use, so Boynton Beach probably would have faced a lawsuit if the commission had rejected the deal.
A more credible source of irritation might be that a company that made $4.6 billion in the last three months of 2009 and will compete with local, unsubsidized merchants is getting any government help to build a store. The Boynton Beach Community Redevelopment Agency paid $1.3 million for the adult entertainment and liquor licenses of the strip club, retired the first and got only $66,000 for the second. Through that purchase, though, Boynton Beach got control of what went on the land.
In addition, says Community Redevelopment Agency Director Lisa Bright, Wal-Mart would get $75,000 from the CRA over five years in return for creating the promised 150 full-time equivalent jobs out of 225 jobs overall. The state also will give money to Wal-Mart as part of that job incentive program.
Overall, though, the deal is good for Boynton Beach, and should be good for the neighborhoods. The store is set to open in the spring of 2011. A nuisance at a gateway to the city is gone. A project went off without allegations of "pay to play." Criticism of the deal doesn't hold up.
