Boca Raton CRA hears amendment to Royal Palm Place hotel plan after debate over parking and design

Boca Raton’s Community Redevelopment Agency on Feb. 23, 2026 took up an amendment to the Royal Palm Place Hotel Individual Development Approval that would remove proposed below‑grade parking and replace it with a seven‑story parking structure, revise hotel room counts and seek technical deviations to the downtown parking standards.

Senior Planner Susan Lesser told the board the amendment would reduce the hotel’s rooms from 144 to 137, eliminate roughly 86,000 square feet of below‑grade parking, add about 7,100 square feet of open space and provide ground‑floor restaurant and retail. Using the applicant’s shared‑parking analysis, Lesser said the code requirement would be 1,905 spaces and the applicant’s alternate rates show 1,417 spaces provided, a 488‑space reduction; staff recommended approval of the deviation and the amendment as consistent with ordinance 40‑35 and the DDRI development order.

The applicant, represented by attorney Ellie Zacharias, said rising construction costs since the COVID pandemic have made the underground parking levels economically infeasible and argued the standalone garage and reconfigured site will eliminate much of Royal Palm Place’s preexisting parking deficit. “Construction costs have gone astronomical since COVID,” Zacharias said, summarizing why the team removed below‑grade parking and proposed a 501‑space garage plus 205 hotel spaces (706 total on‑site) and ground‑floor commercial space.

Commissioners focused questions on sequencing, pedestrian circulation, specific parking removals and design. Development services director Mr. Shadd clarified that the 2022 approval carried a higher baseline (about 1,946 spaces) and that, under the current uses, the code requirement reduced to 1,905 while provided spaces on the site would increase from 1,239 to 1,480 per staff’s calculations. The applicant and the team described a phased plan that would reconfigure the triangular lot first, construct the garage before starting hotel vertical work, and keep the Garden of Humanity intact.

During public comment, residents voiced strong objections to the scale and style of the garage and the cumulative effect of downtown redevelopment. “This will continue the pattern of destroying what charm Boca used to have and turn it into a mundane place like everywhere else,” said Richard Warner. John Perlman and others urged more internal filtering of proposals and warned against turning Boca’s downtown into a West Palm‑style urban core.

Supporters and some commissioners defended the project as consistent with long‑standing downtown redevelopment objectives and with property‑rights limits. Commissioner Drucker and others reminded listeners that the hotel was first approved in 2022 and said the amendment reduces the longstanding parking deficiency while providing flexibility for tenant changes. “We are reducing the deficit by 450 parking spaces and providing a surplus of 69 spaces,” the applicant’s presentation asserted when using the alternate parking-rate scenario.

After applicant closing remarks, a motion was made and seconded to adopt resolution CRP002R7 as amended. Commissioners then debated the constitutional limits on denying uses that comply with the code, the rigor of the city’s review process, and the project’s net improvement to the site’s parking condition. The transcript records the motion and the deliberations but does not include the final recorded vote tally.

The meeting continued with routine reports and the chair adjourned the CRA at 3:40 p.m., with a workshop to follow. Because the transcript excerpt ends before a final roll call is recorded, the board’s ultimate vote count on the resolution is not specified in the available record.