February 2016
Serving Hypoluxo Island, South Palm Beach, Manalapan, Ocean Ridge, Briny Breezes, Gulf Stream and Coastal Delray Beach
Along the Coast
Volume 9 Issue 2
Boynton Beach
Commission agrees to save old high school Developer pledges $4.5M City gives itself 90 days to raise $1.5M share By Jane Smith
AT 100 Summoning the past with a concrete cruise along the old road By Mary Jane Fine “There’s somethin’ about this Sunday It’s a most peculiar gray Strollin’ down the avenue That’s known as A1A.” — from Jimmy Buffet’s Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season That avenue, that celebrated highway, was begun — one significant portion of it, anyway — the same year the original Palm Beach County Courthouse was built; the same year the Prohibition Party’s Sidney Johnston Catts was elected governor of Florida; the same year the infamous Rice Gang robbed the Bank of Homestead and fled into the Everglades with its purloined $6,500. The year was 1916. The highway came to be known as State Road A1A. See A1A on page 22
Delray Beach
Courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County ABOVE: Australian pines flank A1A in Gulf Stream in 1944. LEFT: Boca Ratone by the Sea, a 1923 gas station/dance hall/ fish camp on A1A where the Beach Club is today. Courtesy of the Boca Raton Historical Society
Boynton Beach City Commissioners fell under the spell cast by preservation architect Rick Gonzalez and his plans to restore the historic Boynton Beach High School. On Feb. 2, they voted to proceed with the $6 million project provided financing can be worked out in 90 days. The deal calls for the city to invest $1.5 million. Jeff Hardin, president of Stuartbased Straticon Construction, committed to investing $4.5 million. Straticon also will be the general contractor for the restoration. “I believe in preservation,” Mayor Jerry Taylor said. “I have to be able to look the taxpayer in the eye and say this was a good deal.” Hardin explained the financial end that called for the development team to investigate tax credits for historic properties and how the deal would have to be structured. “The building has to be in private hands,” he said. Their attorneys will look into whether the deal can be a longterm lease with the city receiving the building at the end of 20 years, or possibly have a buyout in 10 years. The city would have to pay See SCHOOL on page 17
Xanax, addiction and death
Family members search for answers after suicide at beachside rehab house By Nick Madigan Tod Abrams’ last act, in a life that included a once-thriving career as a Hollywood film executive and fathering a son whom he said he adored, was to tie a pair of bathrobe cords together, loop them around his neck and fix a knot below his left ear. Then he hanged himself from a metal rod in a closet. “The anguish, anxiety and nightmares were unbearable,” the
Inside Remember the Arcade Tap Room?
New owner breathes life into space again. Page AT1
House of the Month They don’t build them like this anymore. Page H27
52-year-old Abrams had written in a note to his family. Police found it on a dresser in his room on Aug. 30 last year, after he had been dead for a few hours. It was only a month after he Abrams had sought help with his addiction to Xanax, a sedative used to treat anxiety, at a $60,000-a-month residential facility run by Caron
Treatment Centers in an upscale oceanside house in Delray Beach. “I haven’t slept in 4 days and I’m probably beginning to hallucinate,” his note went on. “The people here were very kind but the program was too rigorous, too difficult. I’m too fatigued to proceed on. I don’t have the strength.” With his death, Abrams joined the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people suffering from substance use disorders who in recent years
have succumbed to their disease in Florida. In Palm Beach County alone, at least 377 people died last year from drug overdoses, according to Pamela Cavender, the records custodian for the county’s medical examiner, citing statistics that are still being assembled. The problem, Cavender said, is “out of control.” While the level of commitment to battling drug abuse varies widely, the See SUICIDE on page 30
Love stories
Couples tell how they met. Page H1
Promenade plan scuttled Old Ocean Boulevard to go unchanged. Page 19
Soup’s on
Three exhibitions of work by Andy Warhol at the Boca Museum. Page AT9
Jubilee celebration
St. Vincent’s celebrates 75 years. Special Section