Karen Marcus Archives

What to expect at Jupiter oceanfront park named for ex-Commissioner Karen Marcus

Plans call for picnic areas, walking trails and a scrub preserve but construction is years away.

EVERY OTHER WEEK or so, the driver of a brown Honda Pilot performs a peculiar ritual while motoring north along a certain stretch of U.S. 1 in Jupiter.

On cue, as the vehicle passes a metal blue sign with the words “Future Site of Karen Marcus Ocean Park Preserve,” the driver taps a friendly beep-beep of the horn.

“People in the cars next to me are all looking around like, ‘Who? What?’” says the driver, former Palm Beach County Commissioner Karen Marcus, for whom the 154-acre site is named.

“And if the grandkids are with me, they are absolutely mortified: ‘What are you doing?’ I tell them, ‘It’s my park!'”

It’s not a park yet, which is why Marcus performs another whimsical ritual, this one every other year or so in the days leading up to or following her birthday.

Read the rest of the story by Joe Capozzi at his website ByJoeCapozzi.com

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$350 million at stake: County to consider borrowing for affordable housing, the environment

Are residents willing to put up $200 million to correct the housing imbalance? Would they support $150 million for water resources? County commissioners to discuss Tuesday.

Palm Beach County has never been reluctant to spend large sums of taxpayer money to tackle huge issues.

Voters approved $100 million bonds twice in the 1990s, once to buy environmentally sensitive land and a second time to buy south county farmland.

Without voter approval, county commissioners shelled out $269 million in 2006 to land The Scripps Research Institute and $87 million more to bring Germany’s Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience to Jupiter.

But borrowing $350 million in one fell swoop? That’s what commissioners will contemplate at a 9:30 a.m. March 29 workshop.

North county growth: UF now holds key to 70 acres at Alton

Palm Beach County donated the land to Scripps Florida in 2006 to cement deal to bring Scripps to Abacoa.

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Second of two parts

It started as a deal-sweetener to ensure that Scripps Florida would be built at Abacoa.

Now the vacant 70 acres at Alton in Palm Beach Gardens could become a key piece of a deal worth hundreds of millions to convert Scripps Florida into a branch of the University of Florida.