There's no "ducking the past" when it comes to Greater Bay

Comment Up

 Lake Worth looking east towards the Lake Worth beach

Circa 1960

We continue to read fantasy regarding Commissioner Suzanne Mulvehill.

First, it was rumored in the local news that she was really going to run again in 2012. This rumor was spread by her opponents and the local news picked up on the false rumor that she was just fooling/lying to everyone by saying she wasn't going to run again.  We have seen how that turned out.

Now the local newspaper is still on her case suggesting that (since she was really telling the truth all along that she was not going to run), they had to invent another fantasy to keep the political smirch alive...her "ducking the past." This time the reason used was the Greater Bay law suit that soon approaches trial. This is the most laughable fantasy yet.

I don’t remember the exact date that we signed over our 20 acres of beachfront to Greater Bay but it was in July 2006 that the Agreed Upon Business Terms was signed by the parties. Our City turned over our valuable land to a contractor who had NEVER had any experience on developing anything of this magnitude. The City NEVER really checked them out. And although suggested at the lectern to have the City of Lake Worth visit several of their completed projects here in Florida, the City never visited one that Greater Bay had developed. If you are going to build a house, the first thing that any normal person does is to check out a property where that contractor had built before. It's sort of standard operational procedure. You want to know what you are going to get for your money. In the case of the Lake Worth beach, it was multi-millions of dollars and loss of control for 20 years or more and a contract where Lake Worth was not going to make one red cent.

The basic of things were never checked even though we asked the Commission to do their due diligence.  Peter Willard had submitted a bio that said he was with the Willard Group, Inc. when in fact his corporation had been dissolved. They also stated that Rampart Properties would be the property manager on the new building. This was checked out at the time and Rampart didn't know anything about it and told me that they did not service this area. (They are located in St. Petersburg). Also, GB's Willard had a credit report of shame.

Greater Bay has been involved in building a Starbucks, a day care center, some schools and a Holiday Inn. They never performed under the terms of the Contract with Lake Worth that was for a lease of 20 years minus one day.  Not one little piece of dirt was ever moved. No plans were ever submitted. Greater Bay just continued to stall and stall giving one lame excuse after another.

Cara Jennings and Mark Drautz were the only ones on the dais who voted "nay" to Greater Bay. You can blame this entire Greater Bay mess on Commissioners Nadine Burns, Dave Vespo and especially Retha Lowe, a lady who was just plain tired of "kicking that football" and who was a party to the insurrection on the dais by grabbing the contract out of Drautz's hands and signed it, having never read it.

Then came our Olympic pool--The commission extended the pool project manager's contract on a 4/1 vote. The commission had changed by that time and Cara Jennings was the only commissioner who voted "nay" in retaining the pool project manager who supposedly was looking out for Lake Worth as Greater Bay was in charge of the repairs. He just was not on top of things. (Greater Bay never submitted anything on time nor did they complete anything).  The pool, as everyone knows, had shoddy work and some items were not even done. That commission, (Clemens, Vespo and Lowe) went against the advice of former city attorney Larry Karns, who told them not to hire Greater Bay for the pool repairs. We paid, including the Grant, $500,000 for those repairs plus another few hundred thousand overall for the pool contract manager. Now Bornstein and staff want to put a match to all that money and close our pool.

On December 4, 2008, the City Commission, consisting of Mayor Jeff Clemens and commissioners Retha Lowe (who was the only dissenter--she was holding on to the flim flam man up to the last minute), Cara Jennings, Jo-Ann Golden and Suzanne Mulvehill voted to terminate the Lease with Greater Bay for non-performance. 

So, no one is "ducking the past." The past is what it is--a weak commission that was willing to turn over our 19 acres to someone unqualified because they were tired of all the complaints about "not doing anything about our beach" and putting up with the lack of maintenance by the City of our important asset. Incompetence was the culprit across the board with a commission with no will to do the right thing at our beach that has an overall value of $500 million some believe.

This entire mess happened ALL before Commissioner Mulvehill. She was just lucky enough to be voted into office just a few weeks before the vote to run Greater Bay out of town for sitting on their thumbs for several years and not presenting one thing to the City of Lake Worth to instill any confidence in their company that they could or would perform. Commissioner Mulvehill was on the side of the vote to end the fiasco that never should have happened in the first place. We now have a brand new casino that will pay for itself from revenues and a beach redevelopment paid by the Recreational Bond. Lake Worth will be in control but will have to abide by County rules for 30 years because of the Bond covenants.

As everyone knows, Greater Bay has sued the city. They just won't get completely out of town until they get what they came here to get in the first place...$$$. Now we have yet another commission involved in the Greater Bay mess. No one knows whether this commission will let it proceed to trial. There is a lot of pressure from their political pundits these days to settle legal suits and "make it all go away" placing an emphasis on saving money rather than standing up for principle.

In the meantime, our Casino is completed, the beach redevelopment is proceeding and Mulligans will have its grand opening on October 3. Thank you, Suzanne for the Circle of Light.