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Cool Delray
Concierge
"Delray
cool? Cool for who?" Date: Sunday, July 13, 2008 Edition: Broward Metro Section: Life Page: 1G Zone: SB Byline: By Maria Herrera Staff Writer Illustration: Photo(s) |
Eric Gruber and friends are chatting outside
Coffee District, a trendy spot offering not only lots of fancy
coffees but 80 kinds of beers. It's open-mike night, and Gruber
and other poetry-and-music hopefuls are waiting, talking,
sipping, arguing.
Says Gruber: "I guess it depends what you call cool."
"But what about healing consciousness," says Elias Forma, a local chiropractor.
"No! That's communist," Gruber fires back. "What do you think this is - the Age of Aquarius?"
And so it goes - politics, consciousness, eco-friendliness, $15 artisan beer, retirees humming Beatles lyrics (something off Rubber Soul), young couples at high-top cafe tables sharing a bottle of fine wine, and local poets waiting to ply their art at the microphone.
This is Delray Beach, where coffee shops can be beer boutiques, record stores can be concert halls, and the main drag, Atlantic Avenue, is a playground for kids and adults alike, with weekend art festivals, eateries and clubs that draw visitors from throughout South Florida and beyond.
Plenty of folks say Delray Beach is one cool city.
It has an authentic downtown. Lush neighborhoods with architectural gems. A beach overflowing with tourists, surfers and kite boarders.
This town, population 65,000, has won the All-America City award. Twice.
The Sierra Club has even named Delray to its list of cool cities (CoolCities.us) because of its efforts to go green (which, one could argue, is the latest expression of cool).
But has this village-by-the-sea become too cool for its own good?
Some residents and observers think so.
Gruber, for one, says Delray Beach has lost the real thing, the "grit that made it cool."
Artist Sanjeev Sood agrees. He had to close his sketch and fine art store in the spring. Rents have grown too steep.
"Delray has become too much of a party town," Sood says. "This whole village-by-the-sea has turned into Boca."
What is cool?
So what is cool, anyway? Since jazz legend Charlie Parker used the word to describe a state of mind in the 1940s, cool has entered the language to mean an attitude, an outlook, something you can apply to people, art, culture, even cities.
"Cool" lacks order. It rebels. It is out of the mainstream, out there on the cutting edge.
The word "cool" has endured through the ages, where other slang - groovy, radical, swell, hot, hip, uber, sweet and more - has come and gone.
Cool has staying power.
But it has to be effortless. The minute cools gets branded, the minute everyone agrees something or some place is in fact "cool," it stops being so.
Maybe that's what happened to Delray Beach.
From the ground up
Just how does a city become cool in the first place?
Urban theorist Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, says it happens organically, from the bottom up, through a natural cycle of comings and goings.
Look at New York's SoHo, he says. Or San Francisco's SoMa (cool new name for "South of Market Street," a one-time derelict row).
As Florida explains in The Rise of the Creative Class: "... These neighborhoods initially lost blue-collar jobs as factories and warehouses moved out of outmoded facilities. Artists, culturally creative people and immigrants moved in ... Gays and singles came next. Only much later - once these initial pioneering groups had increased real estate values - did families, professionals, yuppies, technology-based businesses, and retail shops follow."
It didn't happen that way in Delray Beach.
Here, says City Commissioner Brenda Montague, "it was an incredible combination of citizens and government coming together. That's what makes it different. The people interested in change already lived here."
It was, in effect, planned cool.
The city planners started with Atlantic Avenue when it was peppered with boarded-up buildings. Other things followed: Pineapple Grove Arts District, new urbanism - an architectural movement that promotes creating walkable communities - and oodles of festivals.
Now there's even a glossy Atlantic Ave. Magazine. And census figures show most people living downtown are 28 to 33 years old.
One-time artists' colony
Even way back when, Delray attracted a cool set - in the Charlie Parker sense of the word - without much effort. In the '30s, writers and cartoonists turned Delray into a winter artists' colony. Zora Neale Hurston and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay spent time in Delray. Cartoonists Fontaine Fox and H.T. Webster rented artist studios atop a popular dining hall called the Arcade Tap Room on Atlantic Avenue.
And these folks were cool.
The arts influence continued, even if the names were not as big. The annual Delray Affair - with its slew of artists - started in 1966 as the Gladioli Festival to keep residents in town for a couple more weeks each season. Now it blankets the center of town with about 200,000 people. By the 1990s, arts and cultural events were driving redevelopment. Old School Square was restored. The Pineapple Grove Arts District arrived in 1994. Pretty soon Delray was festival central, and downtown was back.
"Artists are sort of the unsung heroes of downtown development because they have the imagination and creativity and they also move into downtown when other people see the deterioration, when other people see it as a turn-off," said Tom Jones, a partner in Coletta and Co., which wrote a 2006 report, "Cultural Delray Beach: Creative, Authentic, Intimate."
"You have to have some balancing act to make sure they stay there."
East of Swinton
There's another thing about Delray's cool: It's mostly white. "Cool downtown" has, for the most part, stayed east of Swinton Avenue - the city's racial dividing line.
Consider U.S. census figures about race. Most of the city's black population - up to 84 percent - lives west of Swinton Avenue. Now take income statistics. Census figures show incomes rising the farther east one goes on Atlantic Avenue. To the west, incomes drop to almost below the poverty level.
For some, the Swinton Avenue dividing line may be nothing more than a symbol from the past. But still, few people from the other side cross it.
"You have the haves and the have-nots," said Josh Smith, a black city activist who has served on several boards, including the Downtown Development Authority.
Smith said many wonder why the city has been slow in extending the coolness of downtown into areas that have been predominantly black.
The city has poured millions of dollars into the northwest-southwest black neighborhoods and continues the revitalization of West Atlantic Avenue. In 2005, Atlantic Grove, a mix of shops, restaurants, condos and town homes on West Atlantic Avenue, opened to much fanfare. Young people moved in, and restaurants were busy.
"Atlantic Avenue is the main thoroughfare that tourists and people visiting Delray Beach take to get downtown," Smith said. "People would have to drive to the predominantly black areas and the city was concerned about its image, and the result is what you see now."
A cool green
Some say Delray Beach is going in a new direction: green.
Last year, the city made it to the Sierra Club's CoolCities.us for its green efforts: T8 high-efficiency ballast fixtures at City Hall, two hybrid vehicles and the mayor's signature on the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement. Now there's a "green" task force.
But is it really going green or is it just a fad?
"I'm not sure," said Steve Pedigo, an economic and consumer trends analyst in Richard Florida's Creative Class Group, consultants on economic growth and innovation. "But the idea of coolness and the idea of green is hot and edgy right now and everybody wants to do it."
So green is the new cool. Young, hip people are becoming more conscious of their surroundings. They want to recycle, vote, protest. They are seeking an experience, Pedigo said.
Cities such as Chicago and New York are marketing themselves as green for being pedestrian friendly. Portland, Ore., and Seattle are touted among the top 10 greenest cities in America, which has attracted cool, young, creative workers looking to live the green experience.
And all of a sudden cool is serious business in Delray Beach.
"CoolCities.us is a specific program. It is not just, 'Hey, Delray is a cool city,' " said Nancy Schneider, chairwoman of the city's Green Task Force.
So far, the task force has come up with a Web site, sustainabledelray.org, and is working on a long list of suggestions for city officials.
But while they ponder how to green up Delray while being fiscally responsible, residents are taking matters into their own hands. Young professionals recently formed South Florida Green Drinks, a social group to link green-minded people.
"We want to dispel the myth that the green movement is driven by a bunch of hippie freaks," said Marci Zaroff, who co-founded South Florida Green Drinks. "We're not going to make people hard-core activists. This is about what you can do every day."
At a South Florida Green Drinks event at Delray's Sundy House, architects, eco-friendly interior designers, green builders and young lawyers running for office exchanged business cards and sipped organic drinks. They talked about harvesting Florida's solar energy and about building responsibly.
"What was once a fad is now becoming a reality," said City Commissioner Gary Eliopoulos, an architect who has advocated for green building in the city. "It will be our future."
Sara Martin, of the Downtown Development Authority, would like that for downtown. She's in charge of special events and marketing the merchants there. In a presentation to the green task force, she said there are organizations to certify green merchants and retailers who recycle and market green products.
"I want to flick a switch and be able to say, 'Downtown Delray Beach is green,' " she said.
Says Gruber: "I guess it depends what you call cool."
"But what about healing consciousness," says Elias Forma, a local chiropractor.
"No! That's communist," Gruber fires back. "What do you think this is - the Age of Aquarius?"
And so it goes - politics, consciousness, eco-friendliness, $15 artisan beer, retirees humming Beatles lyrics (something off Rubber Soul), young couples at high-top cafe tables sharing a bottle of fine wine, and local poets waiting to ply their art at the microphone.
This is Delray Beach, where coffee shops can be beer boutiques, record stores can be concert halls, and the main drag, Atlantic Avenue, is a playground for kids and adults alike, with weekend art festivals, eateries and clubs that draw visitors from throughout South Florida and beyond.
Plenty of folks say Delray Beach is one cool city.
It has an authentic downtown. Lush neighborhoods with architectural gems. A beach overflowing with tourists, surfers and kite boarders.
This town, population 65,000, has won the All-America City award. Twice.
The Sierra Club has even named Delray to its list of cool cities (CoolCities.us) because of its efforts to go green (which, one could argue, is the latest expression of cool).
But has this village-by-the-sea become too cool for its own good?
Some residents and observers think so.
Gruber, for one, says Delray Beach has lost the real thing, the "grit that made it cool."
Artist Sanjeev Sood agrees. He had to close his sketch and fine art store in the spring. Rents have grown too steep.
"Delray has become too much of a party town," Sood says. "This whole village-by-the-sea has turned into Boca."
What is cool?
So what is cool, anyway? Since jazz legend Charlie Parker used the word to describe a state of mind in the 1940s, cool has entered the language to mean an attitude, an outlook, something you can apply to people, art, culture, even cities.
"Cool" lacks order. It rebels. It is out of the mainstream, out there on the cutting edge.
The word "cool" has endured through the ages, where other slang - groovy, radical, swell, hot, hip, uber, sweet and more - has come and gone.
Cool has staying power.
But it has to be effortless. The minute cools gets branded, the minute everyone agrees something or some place is in fact "cool," it stops being so.
Maybe that's what happened to Delray Beach.
From the ground up
Just how does a city become cool in the first place?
Urban theorist Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, says it happens organically, from the bottom up, through a natural cycle of comings and goings.
Look at New York's SoHo, he says. Or San Francisco's SoMa (cool new name for "South of Market Street," a one-time derelict row).
As Florida explains in The Rise of the Creative Class: "... These neighborhoods initially lost blue-collar jobs as factories and warehouses moved out of outmoded facilities. Artists, culturally creative people and immigrants moved in ... Gays and singles came next. Only much later - once these initial pioneering groups had increased real estate values - did families, professionals, yuppies, technology-based businesses, and retail shops follow."
It didn't happen that way in Delray Beach.
Here, says City Commissioner Brenda Montague, "it was an incredible combination of citizens and government coming together. That's what makes it different. The people interested in change already lived here."
It was, in effect, planned cool.
The city planners started with Atlantic Avenue when it was peppered with boarded-up buildings. Other things followed: Pineapple Grove Arts District, new urbanism - an architectural movement that promotes creating walkable communities - and oodles of festivals.
Now there's even a glossy Atlantic Ave. Magazine. And census figures show most people living downtown are 28 to 33 years old.
One-time artists' colony
Even way back when, Delray attracted a cool set - in the Charlie Parker sense of the word - without much effort. In the '30s, writers and cartoonists turned Delray into a winter artists' colony. Zora Neale Hurston and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay spent time in Delray. Cartoonists Fontaine Fox and H.T. Webster rented artist studios atop a popular dining hall called the Arcade Tap Room on Atlantic Avenue.
And these folks were cool.
The arts influence continued, even if the names were not as big. The annual Delray Affair - with its slew of artists - started in 1966 as the Gladioli Festival to keep residents in town for a couple more weeks each season. Now it blankets the center of town with about 200,000 people. By the 1990s, arts and cultural events were driving redevelopment. Old School Square was restored. The Pineapple Grove Arts District arrived in 1994. Pretty soon Delray was festival central, and downtown was back.
"Artists are sort of the unsung heroes of downtown development because they have the imagination and creativity and they also move into downtown when other people see the deterioration, when other people see it as a turn-off," said Tom Jones, a partner in Coletta and Co., which wrote a 2006 report, "Cultural Delray Beach: Creative, Authentic, Intimate."
"You have to have some balancing act to make sure they stay there."
East of Swinton
There's another thing about Delray's cool: It's mostly white. "Cool downtown" has, for the most part, stayed east of Swinton Avenue - the city's racial dividing line.
Consider U.S. census figures about race. Most of the city's black population - up to 84 percent - lives west of Swinton Avenue. Now take income statistics. Census figures show incomes rising the farther east one goes on Atlantic Avenue. To the west, incomes drop to almost below the poverty level.
For some, the Swinton Avenue dividing line may be nothing more than a symbol from the past. But still, few people from the other side cross it.
"You have the haves and the have-nots," said Josh Smith, a black city activist who has served on several boards, including the Downtown Development Authority.
Smith said many wonder why the city has been slow in extending the coolness of downtown into areas that have been predominantly black.
The city has poured millions of dollars into the northwest-southwest black neighborhoods and continues the revitalization of West Atlantic Avenue. In 2005, Atlantic Grove, a mix of shops, restaurants, condos and town homes on West Atlantic Avenue, opened to much fanfare. Young people moved in, and restaurants were busy.
"Atlantic Avenue is the main thoroughfare that tourists and people visiting Delray Beach take to get downtown," Smith said. "People would have to drive to the predominantly black areas and the city was concerned about its image, and the result is what you see now."
A cool green
Some say Delray Beach is going in a new direction: green.
Last year, the city made it to the Sierra Club's CoolCities.us for its green efforts: T8 high-efficiency ballast fixtures at City Hall, two hybrid vehicles and the mayor's signature on the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement. Now there's a "green" task force.
But is it really going green or is it just a fad?
"I'm not sure," said Steve Pedigo, an economic and consumer trends analyst in Richard Florida's Creative Class Group, consultants on economic growth and innovation. "But the idea of coolness and the idea of green is hot and edgy right now and everybody wants to do it."
So green is the new cool. Young, hip people are becoming more conscious of their surroundings. They want to recycle, vote, protest. They are seeking an experience, Pedigo said.
Cities such as Chicago and New York are marketing themselves as green for being pedestrian friendly. Portland, Ore., and Seattle are touted among the top 10 greenest cities in America, which has attracted cool, young, creative workers looking to live the green experience.
And all of a sudden cool is serious business in Delray Beach.
"CoolCities.us is a specific program. It is not just, 'Hey, Delray is a cool city,' " said Nancy Schneider, chairwoman of the city's Green Task Force.
So far, the task force has come up with a Web site, sustainabledelray.org, and is working on a long list of suggestions for city officials.
But while they ponder how to green up Delray while being fiscally responsible, residents are taking matters into their own hands. Young professionals recently formed South Florida Green Drinks, a social group to link green-minded people.
"We want to dispel the myth that the green movement is driven by a bunch of hippie freaks," said Marci Zaroff, who co-founded South Florida Green Drinks. "We're not going to make people hard-core activists. This is about what you can do every day."
At a South Florida Green Drinks event at Delray's Sundy House, architects, eco-friendly interior designers, green builders and young lawyers running for office exchanged business cards and sipped organic drinks. They talked about harvesting Florida's solar energy and about building responsibly.
"What was once a fad is now becoming a reality," said City Commissioner Gary Eliopoulos, an architect who has advocated for green building in the city. "It will be our future."
Sara Martin, of the Downtown Development Authority, would like that for downtown. She's in charge of special events and marketing the merchants there. In a presentation to the green task force, she said there are organizations to certify green merchants and retailers who recycle and market green products.
"I want to flick a switch and be able to say, 'Downtown Delray Beach is green,' " she said.
