Riviera Beach Officials Backpedal

Riviera Beach officials are starting to backtrack a little from the land grab that is about to take effect in that community. Now Mayor Brown,an eminent domain lawyer, claims that the land grab won’t be as large as originally planned.

This from the Palm Beach Post:

[…

"There’s been a terrible spin nationally" to the city’s eminent domain plans, Mayor Michael Brown said.

Only 283 owner-occupied parcels of land need to be acquired, said Ian Meredith, a partner in Portfolio Group LLC, which has teamed with Viking Marine to be the master developer of the project. The hope is that owners will agree to sell their properties at 130 percent of their appraised value and avoid eminent domain, he said.

"People do want to sell us land voluntarily," Meredith said.

Another 1,000 or so renters also could be displaced, Meredith said. In some cases, residents may be relocated a short distance away; in others they won’t have to leave at all, and their homes will be rehabilitated.

Early estimates were that as many as 5,100 residents could be displaced. City Council Chairwoman Liz Wade said that the plan undoubtedly will be tweaked in the future and until it is finalized, nobody can say with certainty how many residents will be affected.

She and others spoke at a workshop on Singer Island aimed at assuaging residents’ concerns. But perhaps three-quarters of the 50 people attending were city staff and people with a financial interest in the project.

Wade and Meredith said absentee landlords and speculators angling for a financial windfall own most of the homes in the redevelopment area. "The reason this city is blighted is absentee landlords," Wade said.

Officials are concerned enough about how the project has been perceived that the master developer is interviewing national public relations firms to counteract the negative publicity.

The project will move part of U.S. 1 and dig a man-made lagoon. A basin for megayachts would be created and high-end residential waterfront housing, retail and office space and a 250-room hotel are planned. Moderately priced housing also would be built, and the working waterfront would be expanded. There also are plans for a 96,000-square-foot aquarium and expansion of Bicentennial Park.

Just what is needed on the southeast shore of Florida is another aquarium. All they need is a fleet of Glass Bottom boats. It would be cheaper and wouldn’t displace so many residents.