Deceit or an Honest Mistake

Who sent boat-lift surveyors to Lake Worth Beach park without city's OK? 'Innocent mistake' blamed

The Spillway controversy has been going on way too long--at least 8 years or so

"ON A WARM MONDAY afternoon in November, Lake Worth Beach resident Carl Schulte was walking his dogs through Spillway Park, a 4.5-acre public greenspace in the city’s College Park neighborhood, when he noticed something odd.

A surveyor with the civil engineering firm Engenuity Group was taking measurements at the north end of the park along the top of a grassy field that slopes down to the south shore of the C-51 canal, which separates Lake Worth Beach from West Palm Beach.

The measurements, the surveyor explained to Schulte and another visitor, were being taken as a preliminary step for a plan to replace the park’s north end with fishing and portage piers and a 30-foot high boat lift allowing small boats to get around the spillway’s flood-control structure."

'Wow,’ City Commissioner Christopher McVoy said when he learned the neighboring municipality had ordered the work. “Getting people to survey land that you neither own nor lease for a project that you’re pushing but has not been approved by the owner or the lessee, the optics don’t look good.’"

Read my post of 4-24-2015

Read Joe Capozzi's article

West Palm Beach south-end revitalization Dream

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Well, if we know anything by now, we know that former Lake Worth CRA member Shanon Materio who is a  commissioner in West Palm Beach, is all for revitalizing the Dixie corridor where she has a business as well as developing the area in the south end of West Palm Beach.

Last night Mrs. Materio along with former commissioner Kimberly Mitchell were at a meeting that lasted about 1.5 hours hosted by the WPB South End Neighborhood Association held at the South Olive Community Center in order to tell the neighbors what they have in mind for the south end of the city--create what they call a spectacular southern entrance to West Palm Beach. The Redevelopment Management Associates, hired by West Palm Beach as a strategic planning agency, conducted the meeting.

When they say "spectacular" they mean opening up the canal on both sides (Lake Worth as well as West Palm Beach) that would entail creating a boat-lift on the C-51 canal with little finger canals like the city of  Venice, Italy.  Once completed, it would become an anchor feature. West Palm Beach bought the old IHOP property in 2012  for $2.9 million which is at the most southern tip of West Palm Beach directly on the canal. WPB leaders bought it in order to eventually revitalize the south end.

Ms. Materio answered  a few questions from the audience. One attendee asked a question on the C-51 Canal and  stated that "7 permits are needed" but Materio said that it is a long way out and therefore that as well as environmental concerns are premature and don't need to be addressed at this stage.  As it is on the Lake Worth side, Materio said that Lake Worth had to be involved. Also it was mentioned by the consultants after Mrs. Materio had left the meeting, that she has been talking to Lake Worth about this project for the past two years.

A few Lake Worth residents were in attendance, one of whom was Commissioner Ryan Maier.