In part 1 of this series Boca’s Growth Advantage: The LIRP, I explored how Boca Raton’s Light Industrial Research Park (LIRP) possesses many of the characteristics planners typically seek in a major mixed use district:
- Existing direct highway access
- Existing large redevelopment sites
- Existing regional transit infrastructure.
In this article, I examine some additional advantages that make the LIRP a unique advantage for Boca Raton and explain the importance that Boca’s new city council seize on its extraordinary potential for growth.
The Not So “Good Bones” Advantage
An overlooked reality of the LIRP is what already exists there. It is filled with aging low detail office and light industrial buildings with surface parking lots that, while functional, generally lack historic, architectural, or cultural attachment for residents.
Much of the LIRP’s office and light industrial inventory was built in the 1970s and 1980s for a different era. Many of these buildings reflect the suburban office park development model of that period, which often prioritized cost efficiency and surface parking over architectural character, flexibility, and modern workplace needs. As these properties approach or exceed 50 years in age, much of this inventory is increasingly viewed within the real estate community as functionally obsolete and better suited for redevelopment than reinvestment.
The Urban Land Institute, in its report “Reinventing America’s Suburban Business Districts,” has identified aging suburban business districts like these as strong candidates for mixed use redevelopment, particularly where large sites, existing infrastructure, and regional transportation access already exist.
That matters.
Downtown Boca carries expectations of architectural character, Mizner influence, and a sense of place that residents feel protective of with historic buildings, banyan trees, and other nostalgic reminders of growing up in Boca. Any redevelopment there is judged not just economically, but emotionally.
In LIRP, redevelopment is not seen as loss. It is seen as upgrade. That creates a fundamentally different political and community dynamic that downtown Boca.
Conflict vs. Compatibility
This is critical. It allows for greater intensity without proportional conflict, faster approvals, and more predictable outcomes.
Downtown Boca redevelopment does not happen in a vacuum. The entire downtown is surrounded by nearby established neighborhoods, many of which have deep roots and strong expectations about scale, traffic, and quality of life. Every increase in height, density, or intensity becomes a perceived negotiation against quality of life for these nearby neighborhoods given the proximity of downtown to adjacent neighborhoods.
LIRP operates under a different condition entirely. These areas are largely office parks and industrial uses buffered by major roadways, golf courses, recreational spaces, and other open spaces. Larger buildings within the LIRP boundaries would have minimal impacts on neighborhoods.
That means growth in these areas produces far less direct impact on existing residential neighborhoods in East Boca. From a planning perspective, this is critical. It allows for greater intensity without proportional conflict, faster approvals, and more predictable outcomes.
In other words, growth where it is wanted, rather than growth that must constantly be defended.
A Strategic Misalignment
Over the last three decades, South Florida has provided clear examples of successful development west of I-95. Areas such as downtown Doral and Metropica Improvement District in Sunrise were planned around large-scale, mixed-use development, with direct highway access, assembled land, room to grow, and have generated billions of dollars in property value and hundreds of millions in tax revenue for their respective cities and counties. Dania Pointe is a large-scale redevelopment area in Dania Beach similarly situated directly off I-95, except on the east side of I-95, and it has done really well.
During those three decades, the City of Boca Raton city council’s treated downtown as the primary stage for growth, when in reality, the City already had a purpose-built corridor along Yamato and a post-IBM campus within the LIRP which was uniquely positioned to absorb the next generation of development. So the opportunity was missed.
To the extent Boca Raton diverted its growth focus away from the LIRP, it likely represents not just a City planning misstep, but a significant lost economic opportunity. The combination of underutilized land, car centric ad-hoc disconnected mobility infrastructure, constrained downtown growth, and missed large-scale redevelopment potential suggests that the long-term fiscal hit to the City’s budget revenue and economic impact may be measured in billions of dollars over the last few decades.
Additionally, the result is a growing tension:
- A downtown pushing against its physical and political growth limits
- A northern Boca Yamato corridor area with obsolete uses, aging buildings, and still waiting to be redeveloped
Looking Forward
Early last year, City leaders rushed the first version of a huge 30-acre Government Campus redevelopment plan with little public outreach in advance. The proposal would have eliminated a City park that also served as a World War II memorial. The controversy around the Government Campus redevelopment plan led to the rise of Jon Pearlman and Save Boca last summer, which quickly gained support from all types of people including real estate owners and professionals sympathetic to southeast Boca neighbors losing their park (see SAVE BOCA: It’s Gonna Make You Mad. for more).
When Save Boca was in its infancy last summer, Pearlman emphasized that Save Boca was focused on protecting public land with citizens having the right to vote on most public land deals, not opposing private development. His message: “Let developers buy their own land and build on it,” resonated with many pro-business residents in the community, including me, who he recruited to support the group.
The previous City Council failed to take citizen concerns about public land and parks seriously. Combined with a growing lack of public trust, that failure contributed to the defeat of “establishment” candidates and the election of three “anti-establishment” Save Boca candidates as the new Council majority. Boca Tribune columnist Kartik Krishnaiyer summarized the results as “Election Armageddon” for Boca’s political class.
Anti-establishment candidates can bring needed reform, particularly when government overreach or poor decision making has created frustration.
But local government is complex, and without the experience or willingness to fully understand those complexities, outsider movements can drift into broad anti-development or anti-business positions rooted more in ideology than practical long-term planning. When that happens, cities risk slowing economic growth, shrinking the tax base, increasing pressure on residents, and eventually triggering a political backlash in the opposite direction. Florida’s Live Local Act also makes clear that the State of Florida is willing to step in to create policy to override local zoning decisions when municipalities become too restrictive.
The New City Council’s Opportunity and Challenge
The new City Council, has a rare opportunity to take a different path from those of the last 30 years. The choice does not have to be between growth and no growth.
The City Council can redefine responsible development by correcting decades of poor planning and directing future growth toward areas already suited for it, particularly the LIRP corridor, where infrastructure exists and land remains underutilized. By making the LIRP Boca’s primary growth engine, Boca can attract better employers and jobs, strengthen the tax base, and fund long needed infrastructure and park improvements without placing additional pressure on established neighborhoods.
If the new City Council successfully shifts Boca toward a smart future growth planning process that includes a denser, infrastructure supported mixed use strategy in the LIRP, it could ultimately be viewed as one of the most pro-business councils in decades. The new “anti-establishment” members have an opportunity to show that responsiveness to residents and support for economic growth are not mutually exclusive. When growth is aligned with infrastructure, land use, and community compatibility, everybody wins.
The future of downtown Boca deserves its own separate discussion, but the opportunity before the City today is clear: not to stop growth, but to finally direct it to the right place through smart future City planning of the LIRP. The recent announcement that the Related Ross real estate company intends to purchase the Boca Raton Innovation Campus section of the LIRP is a positive development and indicator that the LIRP is, in fact, Boca’s growth opportunity. But without the framework in place from the city for the rest of LIRP, it would be surrounded by aging 70-80’s buildings, and “soviet style” block apartments. The Ross initiative is a very promising start indeed.
