Stet NewsYeehaw! This week’s Stet is coming in hot with news about the Jupiter Lighthouse, the first contested election in Palm Beach Gardens since 2021, a bouquet of stories from Joe Capozzi and a month dedicated to mind games.
🚦 Green light for Jupiter Lighthouse
Congress threw a $2.5 million lifeline last fall to start the long-planned effort to save Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse Outstanding Natural Area from erosion.
Catch up quick: The $16 million project, aimed at halting extensive erosion that is threatening the 165-year-old lighthouse, began on Jan. 6 and is expected to be completed by August 2026.
Why it matters: If Congress had not granted the additional money through the Great American Outdoors Act, officials would have had to cut the project to $14 million and put it out for new construction bids, causing delays.
- The contractor is Dickerson Infrastructure of Fort Pierce. Bulldozers are expected in March.
Once completed, the project will transform the sea’s edge into a living shoreline, using native plants and riprap to reduce erosion. Plans also include a public boardwalk, a water taxi dock, terraced walls and creation of a 2-acre salt marsh.
Zoom in: Some boat anchorages will be blocked intermittently during construction. Ultimately, the project will eliminate all but five mooring spots along the Indian River on the natural area’s eastern side.
- A 500-foot segment of the mile-long hiking trail in the 120-acre area will be disrupted.
Of note: The plan calls for planting 10,000 mangroves.
What’s next? Before the bulldozers roll in, workers are moving gopher tortoises and native plants to safety.
Go deeper: Read the full story here.
— Laurie Mermet
🇺🇸 Meet the candidates for Palm Beach Gardens City Council
There’s no candidates’ forum in Palm Beach Gardens.
Why it matters: Stet spoke with the four candidates pursuing two City Council seats in the March 11 election, the first contested election in the city since 2021.
Zoom in: Group 2 incumbent Marcie Tinsley and Group 4 challenger Chuck Millar are government wonks, intimately familiar with site plans and zoning disputes after spending most of their professional careers navigating the intricacies of local government.
- Millar’s opponent, veteran county firefighter John Kemp, is a fourth generation Floridian who said he grew up attending Hialeah Gardens city meetings with his father and uncle.
- Tinsley’s Group 2 opponent is Scott Gilow, an outsider, whose interests as both an ice-skater growing up in Green Bay, Wis., and a bike rider who co-owns an Abacoa bike shop, converged into opposition to the city’s decision to close a skateboard park and convert Plant Drive Park into an ice-skating complex.
Stet has looked into the court records of all four candidates, publishing findings about Millar here and Gilow here.
Now, we go deeper, talking to the candidates about what they like about the city, what they want to change and why they are running. Click here for the story.
— Joel Engelhardt
👕 ‘Saturday Night Live’ tribute to Lake Worth Beach’s Franne Lee
In 2021, Lake Worth Beach-based reporter and friend-of-Stet Joe Capozzi wrote a detailed account of the life of Franne Lee, the original costume designer for “Saturday Night Live.” She lived her final years in Lake Worth Beach but in the avalanche of honors over the show’s 50th anniversary, Joe reported last week, she was remembered.
The show’s costume designer, Tom Broecker, based the 50th anniversary long-sleeve shirt on a 1976 Lee design.
Lee, who died in 2023, modeled the shirt, with the show’s original title “Saturday Night” stitched across the back in a 2021 interview with Joe. Her shirt had the word “Designer” behind the shoulder. Other shirts she made were personalized with “writer” or “cast” or whatever the staff member’s role.
Go deeper: Read Joe’s 50th anniversary update here and his original story on Franne Lee here.
And there’s more this month from Joe Capozzi:
- Video inside Jack the Bike Man’s warehouse, two years before a fire gutted it last week.
- Unlicensed street vendors raise ire in Lake Worth Beach.
- Mel and Vinnie, folk singers in Lake Worth Beach, have a debt of gratitude to the late, great Pete Seeger and an opinion on Seeger’s portrayal in the Bob Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown.”
🍊 The Juice
💰 An unlocked version of The Wall Street Journal’s take on billionaire Stephen Ross’ near $10 billion spree to reshape West Palm Beach. Ross opens up about his plans for the city that has become his primary focus. “Turning a profit is not the priority,” Ross said. “To create a city where the best and brightest want to live, work and play — it gets your juices going.” (Realtor.com)
🌊 How coastal communities in Palm Beach County gird against nature to keep their beaches full of sand. (The Coastal Star)
🪧 Despite student protests, the Florida Board of Governors confirmed former south county lawmaker and GEO executive Adam Hasner as the school’s next president. (University Press)
📸 A photo tour of this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, a 1937 mansion on North Flagler Drive in the Providencia Park neighborhood. (Galerie Magazine)
🌀 While Florida insurers claimed to be losing money in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Michael, their parent companies and affiliates were making billions, a never-before-seen study shows. (Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times $$$)
📝 From WLRN environmental reporter Jenny Staletovich’s weekly newsletter, Field Notes. (Note: Old-timers will remember Jenny as The Palm Beach Post’s ace police reporter in the 1990s.):
The Trump administration continued cuts to the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department in the name of efficiency, dealing yet more blows to agencies chronically understaffed and tasked with protecting the nation’s natural resources.
- The Associated Press reported this week that at least 1,000 workers for the National Park Service were laid off. In Florida, that included a 10-member team of archeologists who cover the southeast, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. The Interior Department, which oversees the park service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and others, has lost at least 2,300 employees, The New York Times reports. According to NPR, 400 staffers were cut from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, while the National Science Foundation laid off 10% of its staff. Many, the journal Science says, were probationary workers and early career scientists who acted as foot soldiers for the government’s science and health agencies. (Sign up for Field Notes here)
561NSIDER: 🧠 Engage the brain
The month of March brings the return of Florida Atlantic University’s Brainy Days, free lectures and workshops focused on the wonders of the human mind.
Why it’s important: The celebration of neuroscience is a key part of establishing our region as the Brain Coast.
Catch up quick: The Brain Coast brand is supported by a collaboration of Palm Health Foundation, UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation and Technology, the Max Planck Florida Institute of Neuroscience, the Stiles Nicholson Foundation and the Southeast Florida Behavioral Health Network.
They aim to build on three pillars:
- Deepening understanding of the brain and education through research.
- Expanding community engagement on brain health.
- Spurring innovation to improve brain health, mental health and personal and community resilience.
The free Brainy Days events are sponsored by FAU’s Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute. Here are highlights:
- The power of the arts and science for resiliency in aging, 5 pm Monday at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at FAU in Jupiter. Register
- Origins and treatments of Alzheimer’s Disease, 7:30 pm Monday, March 10, Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute at FAU in Jupiter. Register
- BrainSparks! Hands-on brain fun. 10 am to 1 pm Saturday, March 15, at the Cox Science Center and Aquarium in West Palm Beach. Free with paid admission to the museum.
- Your brain on God: Insights from functional brain imaging studies. 6 pm Wednesday, March 26, at the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach. Register
Find the full schedule here.
— Carolyn DiPaolo
🎙️ Joel is proud to accept an invitation from the League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County to moderate a discussion for the league’s annual fundraising luncheon Wednesday at the West Palm Beach Marriott. Joel will moderate “From the frontlines: The new media environment,” a talk between MSNBC anchor Katie Phang and Lynn University Professor Robert Watson. Get your tickets here.
