Stet NewsThanks for stopping by. For you today, north county waits for quiet zones, freeing charities from their economic prison, a first look at the new Waterway Cafe and a postcard from a slice of old Florida.
🛤️ Still noisy quiet zones
Last year, north county officials expressed confidence that after years of work, train horns would be silenced along the Florida East Coast Railway tracks.
Now, city officials cannot offer an exact date on when the quiet zones long sought by residents who live near the tracks will go into effect.
As Stet’s Elisabeth Gaffney reports, each city is working independently to obtain a federal signoff and one city, Lake Park, is making no efforts to quiet trains.
Catch up quick: Ever since Brightline began running up to 30 trains a day between West Palm Beach and Orlando in October 2023, noise levels have increased as each train must sound its horn four times before crossing an intersection.
- Quiet zones or not, trains have continued to be involved in deadly crashes, with a 77-year-old driver dying in August at Burns Road in Palm Beach Gardens, which has not silenced horns; and a 68-year-old motorist dying in September at Southeast 23rd Avenue in Boynton Beach, which went quiet in 2018.
With federal money coordinated by the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency, north county cities have poured $3.5 million into improvements, but still need to update signs, pavement markings and lights.
Riviera Beach had estimated its quiet zone would be active last spring. Now, city officials say they are hoping for late spring 2025.
Palm Beach Gardens officials told the City Council last year if all went well, quiet zones could be in place by November. Now the city has spent about $100,000 to install safety features.
Jupiter’s list of improvements includes:
- Replacing the faded “Do not stop on tracks” sign on East Riverside Drive.
- Correcting and replacing misaligned or non-functioning flashing warning beacons on Donald Ross Road, Frederick Small Road and Toney Penna Drive.
- Refreshing the degraded stop line and pavement near the tracks on Center Street.
What they’re saying: “They’re stepping up, making sure that everything is in as good of a condition as it can be to protect public safety,” Jupiter Mayor Jim Kuretski said. “There’s nothing more important than that.”
For more details on where quiet zones stand in north county, click here.
— Elisabeth Gaffney
🚀 A moon shot for Palm Beach County nonprofits
Dan Pallotta has an urgent message for Palm Beach County philanthropists, nonprofit leaders and the community they serve.
- “The nonprofit sector is in an economic prison,” the 2013 TED Talk speaker told nearly 300 people in a virtual conversation last week at the Kravis Center.
Why it’s important: There are 8,000 nonprofit organizations in Palm Beach County. Each of them is charged with keeping their operating expenses low, a value that Pallotta rejects.
- And all of them could be more effective if they joined together, he insists.
In the conversation sponsored by entrepreneur and philanthropist Lisa LaFrance, Extraordinary Charities and Nonprofits First, Pallotta talked about the coordination it took for NASA to get to the moon.
- During the peak of the Apollo program, 400,000 private sector employees made components of the project, he said. “NASA had 40,000 full-time employees. They didn’t build anything. All these 40,000 people did was coordinate the work of the 400,000.”
What he’s saying: ”We have utter chaos in our communities, and we try to solve the problems in silos. How do we band together to create NASA-like coordination?”
By the numbers: In 2013, a 38-year-old executive with a Stanford MBA could command an annual salary of $400,000, Pallotta said. The CEO of a medical charity with a $5 million annual budget made $233,000. The CEO of a hunger charity: $84,000.
- “There’s no way you’re going to get a lot of people with $400,000 talent to make a $316,000 sacrifice every year to become the CEO of a hunger charity,” Pallotta said.
Flashback: Harvard-educated Pallotta launched multi-day bike rides to finance AIDS research and walks to fight breast cancer that raised hundreds of millions of dollars. His enterprise collapsed in 2002 after criticism that too much money was spent on fundraising and staff.
- The experience led Pallotta to give his TED Talk, which has been viewed more than 5 million times, write a book and make a movie. All are designed to get charities to embrace moon-shot ideas and take risks like businesses do.
Pallotta’s advice: “What problem do you want to solve and by when?” he said. “Donors want us to solve problems. Stop boring them to death with ideas that aren’t going to make a difference.”
Could a social enterprise collaborative happen here?
On Saturday, LaFrance announced she will launch and lead an organization called Department of Nonprofit Efficiency (DONE) aimed at revolutionizing the nonprofit sector.
- “By streamlining operations and fostering innovation, we will unlock the sector’s full potential to address the critical challenges we face. Our goal is to drive more funding into impactful solutions, ensuring that by 2040, many of these challenges will be resolved,” she said in a statement to Stet.
Find out more:
- A funders’ panel hosted by Nonprofits First is planned at 2:30 pm March 18 at Keiser University. For more information and to register, visit nonprofitsfirst.org.
- Watch Pallotta’s TED Talk: “The way we think about charity is dead wrong.”
– Carolyn DiPaolo
🍴A Gardens favorite, the Waterway Cafe, reopens
Things are flowing at the Waterway Cafe once more.
The popular restaurant on the Intracoastal Waterway at the southwestern foot of the PGA Boulevard bridge opened last week after a 16-month renovation.
Why it matters: The indoor-outdoor restaurant dates to 1986. As recently as 2022, it was named a top waterfront destination and may be among the county’s top grossing restaurants. It closed for renovations in August 2023.
Who’s excited: Locals cheering on their teams at the former indoor bar, tourists relishing dining in shorts on a floating bar and boaters who docked and ordered food to go.
What’s changed?
- Clean lines, bright whites and natural accents give it an approachable feel, with class.
- A wider, higher portico greets guests who valet.
- Floors have been leveled — first thing you notice inside. A few steps up, but no climbing up and down multiple levels to get to one of 350 seats throughout.
- Bushy live plants in wide concealing planters are 86’ed (all gone, in restaurant parlance) in favor of strategically placed green spots.
- The old sports bar is gone, replaced by dining tables. The new bar, occupying a third of the main room, is wide open, with just two television sets hanging from the ceiling.
- A 20% service charge on every check.
New and notable: The skylight over the bar lights the space in daytime and offers starry-sky views at night. A firepit off the main dining room is a visual “calming” feature. Walls move to offer private areas for dining. Lounge furniture is comfy sofas and low tables for small groups gathering over apps and a drink.
Still here: The mega popular floating bar. Redone to match the dining room light grays and whites and tan woods, but still bobbing. Same menu as indoors.
Insider note: Expect a big Buffalo Bills presence. Owner Marc Mariacher, who took over after Scott and Jill Yates paid $12.5 million for the restaurant in June 2020, is a Bills fan.
To come: Reservations. Now, it’s walk-in only. Also, docking. The 150-foot seawall is being replaced. The tiki hut party area is expected to open in mid-February or March.
Stet’s Jan Norris offers more insight and more photos here.
— Jan Norris
🍊 The Juice
🎓 Florida Atlantic announced three finalists in its search for a new president. They are Michael Hartline, a dean at Florida State University, former House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, and John Volin, the provost at the University of Maine. (FAU release)
🏥 NeuroBehavioral Hospitals, which runs two mental health hospitals in Palm Beach County, has warned that it may close both hospitals but is pursuing a sale that could keep them open. The hospitals are at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach and in a free-standing campus in Boynton Beach. NeuroBehavioral’s parent company, Wellpath Holdings, filed for bankruptcy protection in November. (South Florida Business Journal $$$)
📅 Candidates for election in Jupiter will meet for a public forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. On March 11, voters will choose two council members and a mayor. The forum will be 6 pm Feb. 3 in the Jupiter Community Center across from Town Hall.
💉 Childhood vaccination rates in Florida continue to decline, part of a national trend. In the 2023-24 school year, 88.1% of Florida kindergartners completed required vaccines that protect against severe illnesses, including measles, polio and chickenpox, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures showed. The national average was 92.3%. (WLRN)
🧢 The Miami Marlins are working with The Cordish Cos. of Baltimore to build a dining and entertainment hub in the west plaza of LoanDepot Park, the Little Havana home of the South Florida baseball team. (South Florida Business Journal $$$)
🗳️ ICYMI: City Commissioner Christina Lambert and County Commissioner Gregg Weiss announced last week that they are running for West Palm Beach mayor. The election is more than two years away. (Stet News)
🍊 561NSIDER: A taste of old Florida
Stet’s Jan Norris takes you back to a time when orange and grapefruit groves abounded in Florida and tourists driving to Miami on U.S. 1 stopped at roadside stands packed with fruit and tchotchkes.
Why it matters: Welcome to the one still standing, TerMarsch Groves in Juno Beach.
What’s happening: The family-run business began its 65th season in October selling citrus from a small shop just south of Donald Ross Road that’s frozen in time.
- Bins stacked with yellow and orange fruit greet visitors to a shop that steps right out of the 1950s.
- Customers are urged to sample a wedge or a cup of juice.
T-shirts, beach-scene postcards, starfish wind catchers, and silly gifts, such as coconut monkeys, are on display.
A whole room is dedicated to exotic shell specimens. Wind chimes made of common shells cover the ceiling.
Local foods and those representing Florida — coconut patties, orange blossom honey and chocolate alligators are popular. Gag gifts, too, such as “flamingo eggs.”
By the numbers: It’s a place where just one-fourth of the orders are online. That means 12 hour days greeting customers for the family that runs it.
What she’s saying: “We’re all family here,” said Jenny TerMarsch D’Ambrosio.
- Her grandparents, Wilton and Helen TerMarsch, came down from Michigan in the 1950s and opened a motel and later a fruit stand that sat on the north end of what is now Carl’s Furniture plaza.
Friendliness, a taste of old Florida and a free glass of juice attracted customer Susie Best of West Palm Beach. She recalled Anthony’s Groves in Loxahatchee and Cushman’s on Forest Hill Boulevard, among others.
“Now they’re all gone. They all are closed or online only,” Best said.
What’s next: TerMarsch will keep going as long as possible, D’Ambrosio said.
See the full story by Jan Norris here.
— Jan Norris
👋 Your Stetters – Joel, Carolyn and Liz Capozzi – will be at the Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce meeting Wednesday morning. Say hello if you see us!
Editor’s note: These stories were updated on Jan. 23 to correct the number of train horns, four, that must be sounded before a train arrives at an intersection; to correct the date of the first Brightline service to Orlando, Sept. 22, 2023, not October 2023; to insert the correct first name of Waterway Cafe owner Marc Mariacher and clarify the ownership of the restaurant property; and to remove an incorrect reference to a TerMarsch family member.
