Developers Say 171 West Camino Inspiration Is Palm Beach’s Worth Ave
BOCA RATON, FL (Boca Post) (Copyright © 2025) — Boca Raton’s Community Redevelopment Agency has approved a revised Camino Square Phase 2 plan that trades some apartments for more retail space and adds new requirements aimed at traffic and pedestrian safety along West Camino Real.
The CRA board voted 5–0 on Monday, November 17, to amend Individual Development Approval CRP-16-02R2 for the western 4.54 acres of the Camino Square site at 171 West Camino Real. The property is part of a 9.13-acre downtown redevelopment area just west of the railroad tracks.
Senior planner Susan Lesser told the board the new plan responds directly to concerns raised when the case was continued in October. The applicant has cut the residential count from 394 to 374 units and almost tripled the retail commitment from 8,632 square feet to 23,368 square feet, all within two eight-story buildings with internal structured parking.
“The revised application now requests authorization to construct 374 residential units… and 23,368 square feet of retail high,” Lesser said, noting the mix now includes about 5,805 square feet of restaurant space, 2,000 square feet of fast food, and 15,563 square feet of general retail.
Phase 2 will mirror the scale and architecture of Phase 1, with two eight-story buildings rising to 81 feet, 8 inches, and up to 97 feet, 8 inches when architectural features are included. A seven-story, 291,304-square-foot parking structure is integrated into Building 2, providing 793 parking spaces. A shared-parking analysis shows 793 spaces are required and exactly 793 are provided, using the city’s downtown rules for mixing residential and commercial demand across different times of day.
Open space still hits the city’s 40% requirement. Staff said the project now provides about 40.15% open space, with a central “North Plaza” courtyard, a redesigned “South Plaza” pocket park along Camino Real, and a linear green space along the northern edge of the property.
A key design change is the way the project addresses Southwest 3rd Avenue. The entire Third Avenue frontage is now planned with ground-floor commercial and restaurant space, many spaces built with double-height ceilings of about 20 feet to make the storefronts more visible and flexible. A pedestrian paseo between buildings has been widened from 16 feet to 35 feet and is envisioned as an outdoor dining and gathering area leading into the north courtyard.
“Our inspiration was really Worth Avenue,” applicant representative and attorney Ellie Zacharitis told the board, describing meandering paseos, pocket parks and outdoor dining as the goal. She said eight units were removed in one corner of the south building specifically to make the double-height commercial bay more attractive to a restaurant tenant.
Several new conditions of approval were added.
At the request of Public Works and Engineering, the applicant must dedicate a two-foot-wide easement along its Camino Real frontage to allow for a future wider multi-use path. Before any building permit for Phase 2 is issued, the developer must also make a voluntary $15,000 proffer toward installing a Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon at the existing crosswalk on Camino Real south of the project.
In addition, new conditions limit how much bar space can be added to restaurant bays unless the applicant demonstrates that required parking still works. Staff said the parking study did not assume full bar build-outs, and any change there would have to be reconciled against downtown parking ratios.
One technical deviation remains: the project asks to keep an existing internal driveway at Southwest 3rd Avenue at 33 feet wide instead of the 34 feet required by code. Staff supported the one-foot reduction, citing the existing driveway and no expected operational impact. Zacharitis told the board her client would add the extra foot of pavement if the CRA insisted, but both staff and the applicant preferred to keep landscaping over more asphalt.
Public comment ran sharply divided. Nearby residents and neighborhood advocates questioned the height, intensity and cumulative traffic at an intersection some call “malfunction junction,” and several speakers urged the city to rethink its decades-old downtown ordinance before approving more large projects. Others focused on walkability and safety near the railroad tracks and asked whether more people would end up crossing at risky locations.
Supporters, including some commissioners, pointed to the city’s long-standing downtown rules under Ordinance 4035 and the fact that staff and outside reviewers concluded the project meets those standards. Board members also noted that the new Phase 2 plan generates hundreds fewer daily trips than the large retail center approved in 2019 but never built.
“I know it’s still a lot of trips,” CRA Commissioner Fran Nachlas said, but she cited the added retail, reduced unit count, new mobility easement and RRFB contribution as reasons to back the revised plan. Other board members emphasized the plan’s mix of housing and neighborhood-scale retail and said future CRA funds could be layered onto the private improvements to upgrade sidewalks and crossings at Camino and Southwest 3rd Avenue.
With Monday’s vote, Camino Square Phase 2 moves forward with its amended approval and new conditions. Detailed design, permitting and any city-led mobility projects around the site will be the next steps, likely to unfold over the coming years rather than overnight.
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