Coming to Boca Raton’s Tri-Rail station is a mixed-use project that will offer shops, restaurants and 340 new residences, some of them considered workforce housing. The project’s groundbreaking is expected this summer.
Link at Boca is a transit-oriented development rising at 680 W. Yamato Road, the Tri-Rail station’s parking lot and the land next to it. Once construction begins, the project will take about two years to complete. By then, the mostly vacant area by the Tri-Rail station will have an eight-story tower with studio, one, two and three-bedroom apartments and 24,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.
Link at Boca, which is being developed in collaboration with the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, is just one of the developments in the works along the Tri-Rail corridor, which spans across Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. The transportation authority is investing $40 million to clean up and repair stations with the goal of making them more alluring.
And for the Boca Raton project, the U.S. Department of Transportation has granted a federal loan as part of a series of initiatives aimed at addressing the affordable housing crisis, announced in January in the final days of former President Joe Biden’s administration.
For the Boca Raton Tri-Rail station area, the vision was to create a “vibrant mixed-use environment.” For 13th Floor Investments, which is the developer producing the project, this is the third Link-branded transit-oriented development the firm has created — the other two are Link at Douglas, which is connected to Miami’s Douglas Road Metrorail Station and the upcoming Link at SoMi, which is a project next to the South Miami Metrorail Station.
“We’re very thematic investors, and we think that the future of transit-oriented projects is very bright here in South Florida,” 13th Floor Investments president of development Aaron Stolear said.
“South Florida has many things going for it,” Stolear said, citing the “great weather” as an example. “But the other side of the coin is that it does have a lot of traffic. And so we think that the future of transit-oriented projects is bright in the sense that the value of being close to mass transit is only going to increase over time.”
Meanwhile, the Comras Company is handling the retail leases for Link at Boca, which are “designed to serve residents, transit riders and the wider community with a curated mix including innovative food and beverage concepts, from fast-casual to sit-down dining, as well as wellness and lifestyle-oriented offerings,” according to a statement about the project.
Stolear said 13th Floor is deliberate about which retail tenants they choose for these Link projects. In the Link at Douglas project, for example, there is a grocer, a sushi place and a restaurant that provides breakfast, lunch and dinner, among other tenants.
“We care very deeply about what we bring into our projects, and we think that Link at Boca is going to be the same,” Stolear said. “Ultimately it’s going to have a lot of food and beverage, it may have some exercise and fitness, coffee shops, that sort of tenant is really what we’re going after.”
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Renderings illustrate Link at Boca, a mixed-use project rising next to the Boca Raton Tri-Rail station. The development will feature an eight-story 340-residence tower and 24,000 square feet of retail. (Courtesy/13th Floor Investments)
Transit-oriented developments — or TODs
Link at Boca is one of two rather significant transit-oriented developments coming to the city, with the Boca Raton Brightline station gearing up for a major overhaul with nearly 1,000 residences, office space, shops, restaurants and public gathering spaces all part of the city’s government campus master plan along Palmetto Park Road.
These projects are, in part, the result of city officials’ often impassioned attempts to achieve more connectivity among people, their jobs, businesses, and transportation by taking away cars from roads, not adding them.
Transit-oriented developments represent “a significant urban planning approach,” Dave Magua, a Boca Raton-based broker with the Keyes Company real estate firm, argued in a report he created about the potential impact of transit-oriented development in the city, particularly denoting the proposed Brightline transit-oriented development.
In his research, Magua concluded the potentially positive and negative impacts of these kinds of projects.
On the positive side, such projects may offer:
— Creating jobs and economic growth, which also could mean attracting new residents and businesses.
— Increasing property values and tax revenue for the city.
— Reducing traffic congestion and improving pedestrian infrastructure.
But some of the challenges could be:
— Displacing some existing businesses and residents.
— Placing a strain on existing green spaces — that is, “if new green spaces are not adequately integrated, increased population density” could burden existing parks and recreational areas.
— Facing the “last mile” problem, wherein a need still exists for getting people to their final destination, whether that is work or home, even if they are coming from the Brightline or Tri-Rail station.
One of the biggest challenges in the beginning of projects such as these, though, is fear, Magua said.
“Fear of loss, fear of life change, fear of losing value, losing that enchantment of that community,” he said. “Every time there’s an affordability housing project on any doorstep … there’s always a kick fight back every time.”
In Boca Raton, the government campus project has drawn concern, with some residents worrying about the relocation of the current sports facilities there, encroaching on the nearby neighborhoods and actually adding traffic to the city despite one of the goals being to reduce it.
But to Stolear, “the more the better” when it comes to transit-oriented developments.
“We need to flip a switch in our residents’ heads, if you will,” he said. “In the sense that they need to be comfortable moving around South Florida with a variety of modes of transportation, not necessarily only car.”
The government campus project will be completed in different phases over several years. Link at Boca is expected to be finished by 2027.
Abigail Hasebroock, SunSentinel
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