April 2013
Serving Hypoluxo Island, South Palm Beach, Manalapan, Ocean Ridge, Briny Breezes, Gulf Stream and Coastal Delray Beach
Volume 6 Issue 4
Lights blaze aboard the 355-foot-long dredge Texas as the full-moon rises over coastal Delray Beach on March 20. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
REBUILDING A BEACH
Don’t mess with Texas; work onboard dredge is 24 hours, nonstop By Cheryl Blackerby The big red dredge named Texas sits offshore from Delray Beach, its four 20-cylinder diesel engines — the same engines used in locomotives — pumping sand 24 hours a day onto the beach. Five anchors, each weighing
15,000 pounds, hold the enormous workhorse in place. A crew of 18 to 20 men, including a father and son, lives aboard, working 12-hour shifts, with two weeks on and two weeks off. One is retired U.S. Navy and a few were Merchant Marines. All are well-traveled veterans in a highly specialized
Delray Beach
Intersection will offer fresh competition between grocers By Tim Pallesen Trader Joe’s wants to compete with Fresh Market in a burst of new commercial activity at the corner of Linton Boulevard and South Federal Highway. Delray Place, a proposed shopping center at the southeast corner, is seeking city approval with Trader Joe’s as its marquee tenant. Fresh Market is under construction in the existing Harbor Plaza shopping center on the northeast corner. LA Fitness is replacing Regal 18 Cinema on the northwest corner. Dick’s Sporting Goods is rumored to be the second major tenant at Delray Place. Restaurants such as Bonefish Grill, Pei Wei and Chic-fil-A also are jockeying for position at the intersection where, unlike Atlantic Avenue, the national chains are welcomed as tenants.
Inside Sunrise strollers
Meet some of the folks who frequent the beach at daybreak. Home, Health & Harmony
LA Fitness Dick’s
global operation. Some of them have stayed on the peripatetic dredge for years as it roamed the world — two years in Bahrain, two years off and on in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, months in Cancun, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. It works the East Coast from New York to
Fresh Market
Trader Joe’s
Brownsville, Texas. After the job is over in Delray Beach, the dredge will move to New Jersey for work on beaches damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Home port is New York City. It will make the trip, towed by one towboat, in 10 days. Built in 1980, the Texas is
the most powerful dredge in the United States and in high demand for getting jobs done fast and efficiently. The dredge’s owner, Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company, based in Oak Brook, Ill., was founded in 1890 and is the largest dredge company in the U.S. See DREDGE on page 15
Briny Breezes N Delray Beach
SOURCE: City of Delray Beach “Delray Place will be very upscale — the start of a renaissance on South Federal Highway,” said Kelli Freeman, president of the Tropic Isle Civic Association, where she says most residents are excited to have both Trader Joe’s and Fresh Market as competing specialty grocers nearby. Trader Joe’s nearly backed out when 13 Tropic Isle families who live adjacent to the shopping center fought the grocer’s request to have its delivery trucks arrive as early as 5 a.m. and as late as 10 p.m. “Our specialty grocer says they will walk away if they can’t get the hours they want,” Delray Beach developer Joe Carosella told the city’s Site Plan Review and Appearance Board on March 14. See LINTON on page 4
Low-key celebration honors 50 years of town history By Tim O’Meilia Briny Breezes celebrated its 50th anniversary as a town with a banner and a slide show of 800-plus old photos shown on the mayor’s flat screen television at somebody else’s picnic. The anniversary was March 19. The picnic was March 23. “Low-key” is how Mayor Roger Bennett described it. Which is just the way Brinyites, as they call themselves, like it. Marking the 50th was almost an afterthought by the Town Council. The aldermen decided against extravagantly spending $420 in town money on anniversary lanyards or
commemorative refrigerator magnets. Instead, handouts on homestead exemptions and water conservation were available at a table in the beach clubhouse. The town piggybacked on the annual seasonending mobile home park picnic and beach party, the last major event before snowbirds head back north after Easter. After all, the important 50th anniversary was five years ago when residents marked Briny’s birth as a resident-owned corporation. Fearing the mobile home park would be sold, the residents banded together in 1958 and bought the park from founder Ward Miller’s family See BRINY on page 28
Focus on Delray CRA
High vantage point
Meet your neighbors
Around Town
The agency faces possible changes to its boundaries and challenges over its spending. Pages 8-9
Argentinian couple settled in Ocean Ridge in 2007 and haven’t looked back. Page 30
Tours of the Hillsboro Inlet lighthouse provide a glimpse of history and breathtaking views. Page AT1 Lake Worth restaurant offers a taste of Persia. Page AT6