Palmetto Square is the plaza just east of I-95, on Palmetto Park Blvd., where K-Mart used to be. The owners have seen the writing on the wall and understand the potential of retail space versus residential space. They’ve submitted plans to the City for a new design of the plaza, this time with the mixed-use combination of commercial and residential buildings. Today and tomorrow Selig, the property owners, are hosting a community meeting about the plan.

I don’t live adjacent to the property, but once I did. I only want to share my personal experiences, and give an opinion that not everyone will appreciate or think is valuable. But I feel compelled to say it here.

Several decades ago I frequented Palmetto Square a lot

I moved to Boca the first time in 5th Grade. My family was undergoing a slow and gradual migration here, initiated first by my aunt, my mom’s sister, who moved here before us. I lived with my aunt and uncle to stay with them before, during and after they moved into a home in the neighborhood behind Palmetto Square.

It was during those months that I was staying with my aunt that I attended Addison Mizner. I had my bike to get around and I’d ride it back and forth to school, returning home slightly after everyone else because I joined Safety Patrol.

Moving to a new city and meeting a whole new range of people is something I treasure in hindsight, but it was somewhat stressful. Coming from upstate NY, I knew how to seek comfort in a hot slice of pizza. So the pizza place whose exact name escapes me was a frequent destination.

Now here’s where I’m getting at with this article: the 13th Drive Pathway.

Behind the pizza place was a place where you could walk into the neighborhood to the north, a pathway for pedestrians between the homes, where I’d enter and exit the plaza. It was super convenient. It made the pizza place be two tiny blocks from my aunt’s house. I knew, coming from New York, having street smarts, that this was a pinch point. I knew  that if someone wanted to get me, like local kids, this was the best place for them to do it. In spite of my paranoias, no local kids were out on the prowl to cause problems and nobody was mean to me. I used this pathway a lot, safely, the pathway that WAS at the end of 13th Drive.

I would never ride out onto 12th Ave for anything, even to go back and forth from school. It seemed dangerous to have to get in front of those cars turning into the plaza off of Palmetto so close to the intersection: you couldn’t tell what cars were going to do there the way the road is engineered. So as a 5th grade student I knew to avoid that area. I would cross over instead where it seemed safer, where you could get a bead on the driver’s intentions, ironically where no crossing path existed. It felt safer to me than following the lines the City painted on the road. It was as if someone who never navigated that area or knew about it painted those lines. I was on bike, not foot, and hopping curbs was fun, not annoying.

Fast Forward to today’s Palmetto Square

I’ve read a few articles about the upcoming rebuild of Palmetto Square and I’ve seen the plans. Bocafirst has put several articles of effort into explaining the situation in some detail.  I don’t expect many people to remember the 13th Drive Pathway into Palmetto Square, because to have used it you have to be a real old-timer like me.

I also remember the day that pathway was closed off, the day I stopped going to Palmetto Square for pizza or just to hang out. The day that pathway was closed off I just stopped going over there. It wasn’t fun or convenient any more.

Think about what it would be like to be a kid growing up in the planned residential spaces.

• Would you be able to connect with other kids in the surrounding neighborhood easily without the 13th Drive Pathway?
• Would you even be part of the same neighborhood if there was no pathway? Would you even have a neighborhood if you were a kid living there?
• Would you ride your bike instead past the 7-11, and up 12th to get to Boca Middle the same ways the cars enter and exit?

If you had the path it would be more feasible to cross the bridge behind Boca Middle instead, and never have to navigate around the busses and parents doing drop-off. With adequate paths Boca’s kids can enjoy the same level of community kids in other places have.

Over-needed Pathways vs. NIMBY Concerns

To be honest, I sympathize with both the owners of the plaza and the owners of the residences that are adjacent to the old 13th Drive Pathway. Safety of people who use the pathway is in part the responsibility of the plaza owners. It cannot make residents feel safer with more foot and bike traffic along their property, whether it’s only the neighbors passing by or not. I can understand that the issue of crime prevention closed that pathway. But the pathway did exist when those homes were built because planners at that time thought giving pedestrians access was important.

The Patch Reef Trail That Isn’t

That’s not the only Boca pathway that’s closed down, one time envisioned to be a boon to pedestrians, but understandably no longer accessible at all. The one that really hurts pedestrians and the businesses in Glades Plaza and Town Center Mall is where Patch Reef Trail is now shut off along Boca Bath and Tennis’ west side. Instead of providing students living in the new Lynn University dorms easy and safe access to Glades Plaza and Town Center as a straight beeline footpath back and forth, the students have to foot the cost of not being able to use their feet.

We in Boca Raton have been called a “bedroom community”. This seems to have an effect of being very unfriendly to pedestrians and bikers, closing off access instead of providing for it when and where it’s most obviously needed the most.  It seems that in a bedroom community the emphasis is more on preventing people from walking by our bedroom views than it is raising kids, making life more affordable and easier for the community at large. A bedroom community may be a friendly place to people who can afford to hurkle-durkle all day, but it can also be an unfriendly place for people trying to live normal healthy lives, especially kids who are expected not to durkle and dawdle all day.

How can we have both?

World Class Cities are 3D.  We should be too.

How can we make the bedroom community hurkle-durkle voters happy and still make this a viable community that’s growing at the rate of demand for families as well as the retired and affluent? The answer is simple: we have to think three dimensionally. We need to move upwards and downwards in creating ways to navigate the city. Pathways where someone has to carry their bike up stairs is better than no pathway at all, or having to travel an extra mile to navigate for lack of direct pathways. One raised pathway that is most needed now is a bridge that connects Mizner Park to the Train Station. Imagine people coming to Boca for the evening, to catch a show and have dinner in Mizner. Being able to walk to Mizner is essential, forcing pedestrians across an unfriendly train/road crossing and in front of Investments Limited offices to get there is super-unfriendly.

Going downwards is not out of the question. Until recent years I was of the belief that we could not have underground things in South Florida because of the high water table. Many people don’t realize that new construction in Boca features underground parking many levels deep. Only recently I learned about Amsterdam’s subway that is goes as deep as 75 feet underground. We could go down where it’s impossible to go up, or it would ruin our aesthetic. A tunnel that connects West Boca and Midtown Boca with the Turnpike, I-95 and Downtown Boca, exclusively for electric vehicles could have a giant impact on traffic and pollution. It would make the City more able to be enjoyed by residents.

We’ve got to go two level, start thinking three dimensionally and create plans that are for the Boca we want to live in. Of course we could throw in a few lazy rivers connecting neighborhoods as well as paths, why not?