Stet NewsHello, Stet World! For you today, a palatial theater in progress, shoring up mental health care, tax evasion, PEACE and rewards for reading. And who did Riviera Beach pick for mayor?
🎭 Return of the Royal Poinciana Playhouse
Longtime residents will remember when Palm Beach had an 800-seat theater along the Intracoastal Waterway in Royal Poinciana Plaza that was considered among the most glamorous high-society destinations in Florida.
- Theatrical legends, including Helen Hayes, Dame Judith Anderson and Christopher Plummer, performed there. You could find comedic legends Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason. The Kennedys and European royalty visited frequently.
- The theater closed in 2004 and all but its historic facade was demolished in 2023.
Why it’s important: The Royal Poinciana Playhouse is rising again under a $30 million campaign led by Palm Beach residents Avram “Avie” and Jill Glazer, whose nonprofit Glazer Hall is overseeing construction and will run the theater when it reopens late this year.
Catch up quick: Avie Glazer is the son of Malcolm Glazer, who bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team for a then-record $192 million in 1995 and passed it on to his family after his death in 2014. Avie Glazer is co-chair of the English Premier League club Manchester United, which his father bought for $1.4 billion in 2005.
- The Glazers, who have lived in Palm Beach since 2002, have donated in excess of $15 million.
What they’re saying: “This is the first theater and nonprofit cultural arts center in Palm Beach in 60 years,” Jill Glazer said. In addition to performances, “We are going to offer private spaces overlooking the intracoastal with event rentals, such as wedding receptions.”
Zoom in: Among options is Take a Seat, in which supporters can inscribe a seat in their name with a $10,000 donation. A recent advertisement said just 100 of the 400 seats remain.
Read more: A closer look at the Glazers’ efforts to rekindle theater in Palm Beach.
— Sharon Geltner
Late-breaking news: The Riviera Beach City Council picked Douglas Lawson for mayor. Commissioners voted 3-2 in a special meeting Monday night to select Lawson, a council member who was forced off the ballot in March because of a filing mistake. The council nominated just one other candidate, Shandra Stringer, a consultant who lost a bid to become mayor in 2022. More on the candidates who sought the position here.
🏥 Two hospitals — $1 each
A buyer has emerged to keep two mental health hospitals with 110 beds in Palm Beach County from closing.
The price? $2, plus the assumption of debt.
Why it’s important: NeuroBehavioral Hospitals’ West Palm Beach location is just one of four in the county that accepts Baker Act patients, the patients most in crisis who have been deemed either a harm to themselves or others.
- A fifth Baker Act facility, the 44-bed nonprofit Jerome Golden Center for Behavioral Health in West Palm Beach, closed in October 2019 and remains vacant.
Alexis Altier, who owns the Mandala Healing Center off of 45th Street, said she can turn around NBH, which opened in 2022. The money-losing hospital has 42 beds at St. Mary’s and 71 non-Baker Act beds at the former Watershed substance abuse treatment facility in Boynton Beach.
- Altier has agreed to pay $1 for each.
What she’s saying: “It’s important that those beds remain available,” Altier told Stet News. “Having that community-focused service provider is a 100 percent necessity. That’s why we stepped up, knowing we can fix this. We can turn it around.”
Zoom in: Aside from Baker Act inpatient beds, NBH handles hundreds of patients monthly who do not need to be admitted, directing them to care options that often help keep patients out of jail.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Alfredo Perez approved the sale verbally last week in Houston. Final paperwork has not been completed.
Of note: The hospitals endured $16.9 million in operating losses over 2023 and 2024, NBH’s owner, Wellpath, declared in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy court filing. After paying $9.5 million in 2021 for the Boynton Beach campus and millions more to renovate it, Wellpath sold it and does not own either of its properties.
Read more: Click here to see how Ann Berner, CEO of the Southeast Florida Behavioral Health Network, played a role in finding a buyer.
— Joel Engelhardt
⚖️ Prison for nursing home operator
Paul Walczak, the oldest son of longtime Palm Beach County GOP powerhouse Elizabeth Fago, last week was sentenced to 18 months in prison in federal court.
Why it’s important: U.S. prosecutors said he bilked the government out of nearly $11 million in taxes.
- As part of a plea deal, in November Walczak admitted that for years he pocketed millions he withheld from employees’ paychecks instead of turning it over to the IRS.
- He faced a minimum three-year sentence after pleading guilty to two charges.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra imposed the lesser sentence after a three-hour hearing Friday in a courtroom packed with Walczak’s family and friends.
He also ordered Walczak to repay $4 million he owes in back taxes.
“The defendant — like most tax cheats — was motivated by greed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Flanagan wrote in court papers.
- Walczak resides in a $5.6 million house along the Intracoastal Waterway in north county.
- He lived a lavish lifestyle, prosecutors said, buying a $2 million yacht and chartering private jets.
Walczak learned the nursing home business from his mother and then launched his own farflung venture, court papers show.
“Paul’s actions, while wrong, were not motivated by personal greed, but by a misguided attempt to protect employees and to keep a business alive during extraordinary financial distress,” his mother wrote Marra, pleading for leniency.
Zoom out: Flanagan said few people are prosecuted for tax fraud. Nationally, in 2023, “a mere” 363 people faced tax charges — 0.57% of all cases filed by federal prosecutors, he wrote.
Walczak was charged after repeatedly reneging on promises to repay the government, he said.
Read more: Click here to see how the judge reached his decision.
— Jane Musgrave
🕊️ PEACE pushes priorities
More than 1,000 members of PEACE gathered in Jupiter last week to challenge Palm Beach County leaders to make bold changes for the least among us.
Why it matters: The faith-based coalition is focused on three areas where it has identified unbearable inequity: law enforcement traffic stops, affordable housing and mental health.
Back story: PEACE, which stands for People Engaged in Active Community Efforts, was founded in 1991. It is made up of 25 congregations of various denominations in Palm Beach County. Each year, it calls out leaders to support its priorities.
- Among its priorities April 7 at its annual meeting at JupiterFIRST Church is law enforcement.
Last year, PEACE asked Sheriff Ric Bradshaw to track who is being pulled over by his department.
They wanted to minimize racial profiling.
“Data analysis and public transparency can show our community that law enforcement agencies can be trusted,” Annie Ruth Nelson of Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church said.
Bradshaw told the audience traffic stop data is being collected and the department is working with criminal justice expert Jack McDevitt to analyze the data.
What’s next: PEACE and the sheriff agreed to meet this summer to go over the data.
Keep reading to find out the results of PEACE’s activism for affordable housing and mental health.
– Carolyn DiPaolo
💼 Picking a county administrator
County commissioners named their choices and alternates last week for a seven-member task force to review applications for county administrator and submit to commissioners the names of five finalists.
The appointees are:
- District 1 Mayor Maria Marino: Palm Beach Gardens City Manager Ron Ferris; North County Neighborhood Coalition President Sal Faso.
- District 2 Commissioner Gregg Weiss: Accountant Jay Nisberg; contractor Ronald “Ron” Davis.
- District 3 Commissioner Joel Flores: Palm Beach State College Honors Director Marcella Montesinos; hiring consultant Jorge Sigler.
- District 4 Commissioner Marci Woodward: developer Sam Caliendo, her appointee to the county Zoning Commission; developer Brian Stenberg, an unsuccessful Boca Raton City Council candidate and Woodward’s appointee to the Planning Commission.
- District 5 Commissioner Maria Sachs: Chabad West Delray Rabbi Yossi Shapiro; management consultant Lee Feldman.
- District 6 Commissioner Sara Baxter: conservative business leader John R. Smith; Bedner’s Farm Fresh Market owner Steve Bedner.
- District 7 Commissioner Bobby Powell: business development manager Kimberly Weston; community relations consultant Bruce Lewis.
Stet’s past coverage here and here.
🍊 The Juice
🛒 Michigan-based organic grocer Plum Market is planning a full-size store to open next year in Palm Beach Gardens at the Prosperity Centre plaza, which is across Prosperity Farms Road from Trader Joe’s on PGA Boulevard. The store’s founders are former Whole Foods Market executives. (South Florida Business Journal $$$)
💰 A 40-acre industrial property southwest of Florida’s Turnpike and Belvedere Road sold for $65 million to auto auction company Copart. (South Florida Business Journal$$$)
🚒 Delray Beach said it would fire the firefighter at the wheel of the fire truck in last year’s Brightline crash. Video released by Brightline showed the large truck maneuvering around a lowered railroad crossing gate as the train approached. It cost the city $1.4 million to replace the truck. (The Coastal Star)
📅 Floridians get a reprieve from today’s Tax Day deadline. Because of the chaos of last year’s hurricanes, the IRS has extended the deadline for income tax filings from Florida to May 1. (Miami Herald $$$)
561NSIDER: 🏆 Feeding Hungry Minds: Rewards for reading
Third of five
“I’m not political. I’m a member of the ‘R’ party and ‘R’ stands for reading.” — Ted Hoskinson, Roots and Wings
Ted Hoskinson, the CEO of Roots & Wings, is on a mission to empower young readers and their teachers.
Why it matters: Hoskinson of Delray Beach is a retired educator and business owner. He founded the nonprofit in 2016 in honor of his late wife, Anne. It provides free, after-school tutoring for struggling readers in grades 1 through 3.
- These programs, now at 15 schools from Jupiter to south county, reach nearly 1,300 students.
How it works: Students with perfect attendance earn “perfect” T-shirts to emphasize the importance of showing up to their success.
- If students exceed their reading growth goal, they receive a new bicycle and helmet thanks to the organization’s partnership with the Boca West Children’s Foundation.
- Roots & Wings also recognizes outstanding educators.
It’s easy to get distracted by the issues that brought the child to that point — like generational poverty and parental illiteracy and kids who don’t hear English at home — but those are social challenges, he said. Teachers are not equipped to solve those problems, but they can put books in kids’ hands and provide tutors and give kids incentives for doing well.
Hoskinson asks a simple question. “The child who cannot read: What’s the best job that he can get? It all starts with literacy.”
This is the third of five Stet News snapshots of Palm Beach County organizations devoted to childhood literacy. Last week: the Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County.
Next week: The Foundations School.
— Janis Fontaine
