Joel EngelhardtCity selection committee, after closed-door meeting, unanimously endorses plan for two-story Sea Salt Beach House by Breakwater Hospitality Group.
The owners of The Wharf on Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Boulevard, an open-air event space with three eateries, have been selected to build an $18.7 million waterfront restaurant in West Palm Beach’s Currie Park.
The Miami-based Breakwater Hospitality Group is calling its 378-seat restaurant Sea Salt Beach House. Its concept centers on fresh, seafood-oriented cuisine for full-service dining combined with casual meals and takeout.
“It is a place to come after a morning walk, a youth sporting event, a sunset along the waterfront or simply as a familiar, trusted local destination,” Breakwater said in its proposal. “Our philosophy is simple: A good neighborhood starts with good neighbors.”
It also would provide outdoor seating and a second-floor event ballroom with 328 seats, billed as a flexible, community-accessible venue for weddings, corporate and nonprofit events and community meetings.
Breakwater beat competing proposals from Ned Grace, developer of Nora, and his partner, Nick Coniglio, the owner of E.R. Bradley’s, as well as a third proposal from Hadley Doyle-Gonzalez, whose family ran the Panama Hattie’s Rum Bar in Palm Beach Gardens.
The decision allows Breakwater to negotiate a contract with the city that must be approved by the City Commission.
Breakwater promised $150,000 a year in base rent plus 3% of gross revenues over $10 million. It estimated its payment could amount to $316,440 in the fifth year.
It asked for a 30-year lease with two 15-year extensions.
It would build the restaurant over about 18 months as the city completes its $37 million renovation of the park at 23rd Street, about 1.5 miles north of downtown.
The author of the park’s master plan, Chen Moore & Associates, is a member of Breakwater’s team.
Public locked out of presentations
The five committee members, including Daniah Missmar, vice president of development at Related Ross, each ranked Breakwater highest. While Related Ross and E.R. Bradley’s recently clashed over a proposed downtown park, Missmar gave Coniglio’s proposal a higher score than two of her colleagues and only slightly lower than two others.
The other four committee members were Michael Whiteman, president of Baum+Whiteman restaurant consultants; John Carpenter, a member of the advisory board of the city’s Northwood Community Redevelopment Agency; Jade Greene, deputy director of the city CRA; and Leah Rockwell, the city’s director of parks and recreation.
The committee heard from all three proposers on June 10 in a meeting advertised as open to the public. But city officials wouldn’t let members of the public past the first floor to attend the meeting on the fifth floor, initially without explanation.
The last-minute move locked out two members of the media (Stet included) and three residents who came to see the presentations.
About an hour after the meeting start time, City Attorney Kimberly Rothenburg came to the first floor and cited a recently passed state law that allows interviews with proposers to be closed to the public. She didn’t explain why the meeting had been advertised as open.
The city opened the meeting to the public later that day when it came time for the committee to deliberate. Committee members shared their thoughts about each proposal before scoring them on six criteria, including conceptual plan and programming, construction budget and schedule and financial strength.
City procurement officials determined that all three teams failed to properly fill out a form for small business involvement so all three got zeroes, reducing the total points available to 90 from 100.
Breakwater averaged 87.4 on the five rankings with Grace and Coniglio’s NDT Development at 79.2 and Doyle-Gonzalez’ SMG Drones at 62.
The city charged Stet $10.63 and took nearly a week to provide the committee’s score sheets. The city based the price for the public record on it taking 30 minutes to review and copy six sheets of paper.
The city provided Stet with the full proposals from the three restaurant teams, totaling 333 pages, for free on June 16 after estimating in May that Stet would have to pay $337 to obtain the public documents.
Stet refused to pay the city to review and redact the records in May after seeing that the proposers themselves were required by the city to take those steps. The city’s decision to provide them for free indicates someone else may have paid to have the documents reviewed. The documents the city ultimately provided to Stet contained no redactions.
See the three proposals right here. No charge:
Breakdown on the Breakwater team
Breakwater’s co-founders, Alex Mantecon and Emilio “Emi” Guerra, presented to the selection committee and came back for deliberations. Their 216-page proposal included letters of reference from former Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez and Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Steve Glassman.
Mantecon and Guerra founded Breakwater in 2018.
Ten years earlier, Mantecon co-founded MV Real Estate, overseeing transactions involving more than 200 properties and the development and management of the company’s multifamily, office, hospitality and residential pipeline, the Breakwater proposal said. It said he specialized in the sourcing and development of complex real estate projects.
Guerra, owner of Guerra Marketing Group, claims more than 25 years of experience “launching and scaling hospitality concepts,” and “creating community-driven environments that balance cultural relevance, economic vitality and experiential design.”
Aside from Chen Moore, their team includes another member with ties to West Palm Beach.
Frankie Ruiz, director of events for Breakwater, was part-owner of US Road Sports when it took over the Marathon of the Palm Beaches from the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches in 2012. Ruiz oversaw production of the event through 2015. He is a running coach and community leader best known for co-founding the Fitbit Miami Marathon, now owned by Life Time.
Their proposal touted Breakwater’s experience not just with The Wharf along Fort Lauderdale’s New River but Pier 5 on Biscayne Bay in Bayside Marketplace and Regatta Grove along the Miami River, which they called “a highly immersive, design-forward outdoor venue” that combines “layered experiential environments with food-forward concepts, live programming and elevated beverage offerings to create a destination that feels both high-energy and thoughtfully curated.”
Across all venues, Breakwater estimated that its 500 employees annually serve 2.5 million customers and hold 700 events. It put company revenues at $65 million.
Its sample menu included a $52 ribeye, $39 blackened Florida grouper and $39 lobster linguine with $14 margaritas and a $62 pitcher of mojitos.
Competing proposals
NDT pitched its local knowledge, calling its restaurant Providencia at Currie Park after the ship that wrecked off the Palm Beach coast in 1878. It sought a 20-year lease with four five-year extensions but didn’t provide a base rent proposal or revenue-sharing plan, leaving those financial considerations to negotiations with the city.
Its space would include The Creamery at Providencia, a coffee and ice cream window, plus casual counter service. Its dinner menu didn’t include prices but featured lamb pappardelle and filet mignon.
NDT’s proposal included a letter of recommendation from Related Group of Miami CEO Jon Paul Perez, who worked with the team members on restaurants at Related’s Icon Marina Village in West Palm Beach.
SMG Drones, which worked with local architect Rick Gonzalez, called its restaurant West Palm Beach House and estimated construction at $6 million, a figure committee members deemed low.
SMG couldn’t cite any restaurant experience since 2007, about seven years before Panama Hattie’s closed. It proposed a 30-year lease paying the city $379,440 per year plus 6% of gross revenues. It projected the fifth year rent payment would be $781,000.
It, too, proposed an upstairs event space. Its sample menu featured a $30 crab cake roll, $41 wood-grilled snapper and $38 blackened mahi.
The reconstruction of the park, long a haven to homeless populations, comes as nearby land, vacant since the 2008 crash, is stirring with development activity.
Developer Terra, partnering with Miami-based BH Group, has submitted plans to the city to build 31-story towers with 281 units on 1.5 acres just west of the park and plans to buy the land from billionaire Jeff Greene, the South Florida Business Journal reported June 18.
