Several times in conversation people have mentioned the old West Boca Walmart to us. For those who don’t know, there used to be a Walmart on the southeast corner of US-441 and West Palmetto Park Road. You can see the location on the satellite image below, with our annotations. As you can see, it’s across from the Lowe’s and Walgreens, to the south, and “kitty corner” to the Chili’s. Yesterday a reader said she noticed a construction trailer there. So we did a little research. We can’t confirm this, but a new Walmart Supercenter may open in this location in 2014. For now our only source for this is a brief mention in a Sun Sentinel article in June.
West of Boca Raton, a Walmart on Palmetto Park Road at U.S. 441 closed five years ago when a new supercenter opened a few miles away at Hillsboro Boulevard and 441. But the west Boca store will reopen next year as a supercenter.
We’ve searched quite a bit for other information. One friend told us he heard a rumor that the property is owned by the Rooney family who are going to turn it into a poker room. We checked the property appraiser record and the property owner is none other than “WAL MART STORES EAST LP”. They’ve owned it since 1992. The property is appraised at $6.3M, and pays over $100K a year in property tax. So Walmart is spending a lot of money to hold onto that land. Also, any change of use would require zoning approval, and the powers that be in West Boca have been vocally critical of casino expansion in Coconut Creek, so it’s hard to imagine them liking a poker room here. As we look at the property, it just doesn’t seem big enough for what we think of as a “Supercenter.” But we might be wrong about that. An article from The News back when it was built described it as being 136,000 square feet (reduced from what had been proposed as 145,000 square feet. The Wikipedia entry on Walmart Supercenters says they can be as small as 98,000 square feet, with an average of 197,000 square feet. So this would be small by Supercenter standards, but not the smallest. Update We visited the property this morning. On the Palmetto side there is an entrance, closed when we were there, with signs out front.
On the larger sign are documents. A couple indicate application for a storm water discharge permit for construction work. A letter from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection is dated November 26th and states that the permit is effective on the 29th.
A “construction site notice” indicates a 122,353 square foot building and a “Supercenter – expansion” for “Store #3858-00”.
Here’s the best photo we could get of what’s behind the fence. It doesn’t look like they’ve done much yet.
Something fundamental has changed at Apple. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because Steve Jobs is gone. I first noticed things going downhill a few months ago. But recent problems with iOS 7 and the new Mavericks OS for Macs have convinced me that it’s a big problem that will probably get worse. There was also a recent visit to Town Center mall in Boca Raton. We passed by the Apple Store and there were far fewer customers than we’re used to seeing in there. I’ve been an Apple fan since before the Mac. I started using computers back in the late 1970s, writing programs in BASIC on the Commodore Pet, and later played around with various Apple II models. When the original Mac came out in 1984, I was hooked. Over the years I used DOS and Windows as necessary, but I always preferred Macs. When my law practice started generating enough revenue, around 8 years ago, we went all in on Apple and haven’t looked back. Until now. We currently have multiple iPhones and iPads in our family, along with three iMacs and a MacBook Pro laptop. And we have a couple older laptops and a recently retired iMac sitting around. I was also an Apple shareholder, but I sold my stock about a month ago. I was actually talking to a friend of mine about this a few days ago. She lives in Germany and works as an investor and she told me that she is currently thinking about adding some Apple stocks to her portfolio. Apparently, in Germany, a lot of people are convinced that now is the time to start Apple Aktien ins Portfolio holen (adding Apple stocks into your portfolio). I suppose when it comes to stocks and shares, it is all about doing plenty of research to discover what is best for your own portfolio after all! What is good for my friend might not be best for my portfolio and vice versa depending on the markets. Anyway, for me, the watershed moment was when I upgraded my iPhone 4S to the new iOS 7. The experience reminds me of the title of an old Rick Moranis movie, “Honey They Shrunk the Kids,” but with a twist. Honey They Stunk My iPhone. Before the “upgrade,” my iPhone worked fine. It was fast. It did all the things I wanted to do and did them well. I didn’t upgrade right away. I waited to see if there were any news stories or other hints of problems, and until they’d had a couple rounds of bug fixes. In mid-October I upgraded to version 7.0.2, and I’m currently using the latest, 7.0.4. It took a few days for me to notice the problems. The phone is much slower now, dramatically slower than it was with iOS 6. There’s something wrong with the caching. Under iOS 6, when I’d switch from one app to another and then switch back, it would usually retain the information on where I was. Now it’s much more likely to dump and force me to restart in the app when I come back. Certain actions that used to be nearly instant now take several seconds, which of course in our modern age feels like an eternity. As an aside this reminds me of the Louis CK interview with Conan O’Brien – Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy:
There’s a tendency to think any problem you experience is bigger and as humans we often do not realize that such problems may be specific to us – that it may be a small problem and not widespread. In this case the speed issue does appear to affect many people. ReadWrite has a help article for iPhone 4 and 4S owners dealing with the iOS 7 slowdown, and there are a number of other articles on the subject. Just Google ios 7 iphone 4s slow. Speed is not the only issue. There have been many complaints about various changes. Personally I find the Calendar app far less usable. I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s wrong with it, but it’s worse. Imore suggests some alternative Calendar apps for those who are frustrated. For other criticisms, see 15 most annoying things about iOS 7 or 7 misses in iOS 7. As another example, the Mail app has become quirky. Here’s a couple things I noticed recently. In my inbox I have a bunch of messages. When I know I don’t want something I click on the edit option and I can delete messages without having to click into them. In the image below, you see the third message has a circle next to it, which allows me to check it and then delete checked messages. That circle does not appear for the top two messages? Why not? I have no idea. Also, you see in the above image a “No Sender” message. It is also something that can’t be deleted, and was apparently “sent” in 1969. Clicking on it accomplishes nothing. What is this? Why is my Mail app acting up? Deep down this reflects a huge underlying problem for Apple. The company’s success has been driven by its obsession with user interface, commonly referred to in the industry as UX.n release or so that they comply with various required standards. I have lovedause their UX has long been better than Windows. I feel the same about the iPhone. They nailed the user experience on the original and had been doing ve problem because the engineers who ultimately make everything work have different expectations than regular users. When Apple ran an ad campaign with the phrase “The computer for the rest of us,” my engineer brother sarcastically described it as “The computer for the rest of them.” One of the great things about Steve Jobs is that he was able to drive the engineers at Apple to make their products easy to use. With iOS 7 and other issues we’re all seeing, that’s clearly gone now. My next phone will not be an iPhone. It will probably run some version of Android, especially if Amazon comes out with one. Jeff Bezos at Amazon is the current leader in the industry at delivering a quality user interface. On the desktop and laptop front, I haven’t given up on Macs yet. We had a major problem with our newest iMac the other day. It was a very frustrating experience. I spent a few hours with Apple’s customer service and we were not able to get it fixed. It felt like the support person was going through the motions and really didn’t have the technical expertise to understand what was going on. On the bright side, the people I spoke with were clearly Americans working in the United States, and they stayed focused on me. With some companies you talk to someone in a foreign country, often India, and you get the feeling they’re handling two or three calls at the same time. Also to Apple’s credit, the same support person agreed to replace the iMac with a new one. I had to drive to the store to pick it up, but it was brand spanking new and a slightly newer model so in that sense they did take care of me. On the negative side, I still had to upgrade it to the new Mavericks OS myself, rather than it being preloaded on the machine. Mavericks was released well over a month ago. On that visit I again noticed the Apple Store was nowhere near as crowded as it had been even a few months earlier. This suggests that Apple’s “buzz” is fading. For investors that should be a huge concern. And one aside, I wonder why Apple never built or bought its own search engine for all the searches that are done on the various iPhones, iPads and so on. That is a hugely successful business, in terms of ad revenue and big data. It seems like a business blunder. Sadly it appears the Apple has fallen far from the tree it once was. Will it be able to get back up again?
West Boca News likes to tell stories about unusual businesses in our area. For example, we did a profile on FridgTech last year. With the holiday season upon us, we thought the Coin and Jewelry Gallery of Boca Raton would be interesting for our readers. The store is in West Boca Square, the plaza on the west side of 441, north of Palmetto. The biggest store in there is Target. The gallery is halfway between Long Island Bagel and Babies R’ Us. The West Boca store opened in February of 2012. They also have a place on Military Trail in East Boca (the plaza entrance is across from Butts Road). We became friends with Marc Tancer sometime last year. He’s been working in the business with his uncle Gary for a couple years now. He’s bright, thoughtful, and was able to explain a lot about how the business works and who their customers are. Most of the what they do breaks down into two groups of customers: Buyers and sellers. Unlike the way we think about most businesses, sellers are actually the most important in this business. Without people coming in to sell, there’s nothing for the store to sell to buyers. And of course, there are many customers who both buy and sell, selling jewelry and then buying coins, for example. I asked Marc what the holiday season is like for his business. They do not publicize Black Friday promotions. Unlike other stores, they can’t give large discounts on their merchandise because the mark up is relatively small to start with. However, for this Friday and Saturday Marc expects to give substantial discounts on the premiums they charge. Sellers come to the store with jewelry, sterling silver, flatware, coins and other items that they inherited, or that they just need to sell. You’ll love the security guard at the front door. Kennedy half-dollars and Eisenhower silver dollars. Buyers mostly buy coins. If you want to learn more about collectable coins, then there is a blog post called ‘3 Coins That Are Collectable’ on Dramming News which will provide all of the necessary information. There are two broad types of coins that the store sells: Collectibles and bullion. There are two main types of buyers who come to the store: Collectors and investors. Collectors are generally looking for coins that have a substantial value beyond the specific metal and its weight. The field is also known as numismatics. Within that area, some coins are particularly valuable because they are scarce, and that increases their value as collector’s items. As an extreme example of that, they have listed on their eBay store an 1855 Indian Princess gold dollar for $18,000. Regular investors not seeking that kind of collectible value shop for bullion, or bullion coins, where the main value of the coin is the metal and its weight, or what some describe as melt value. Those looking to learn the ropes of investing in precious metals and who are trying to find a place to begin may want to check out gsiexchange.com to learn about the markets, tips for buying and selling, popular products for investors, and more. Gold and silver trade in markets at something known as the spot price. One of the most popular places to see spot prices is on the Kitco website. These prices reflect large transactions of precious metals, mainly gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Bullion coin prices are generally a small percentage higher than the spot price for the relevant metal. There is a wide range of bullion coins. The most common example is dimes, quarters and half-dollars from before 1965, when they still had actual silver in them. Gold bullion coins include American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs and South African Krugerrands. For silver you might see American Silver Eagles, Canadian Silver Maples, and Chinese Silver Pandas. There are many others. Typically the lowest cost way to get one-ounce silver coins is what are known as “silver rounds”, which do not carry a prominent brand name like the ones mentioned above. They tend to have the lowest premium over “spot.” Coins come in a variety of sizes, from an ounce down to as small as a tenth of an ounce, plus the pre-1965 coins. You can get some idea of their values on the coinflation website, though the store may have information beyond what such websites offer. A display of coins and other numismatics. From an investor perspective, one can also buy precious metals through mutual funds and especially exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Physical coins and other bullion have both advantages and disadvantages compared to ETFs. From the standpoint of expenses, ETFs tend to be far more efficient, and that is only set to rise, as the likes of Hydrogen ETFs are now coming to the forefront of this sector too – see hier for more information. In the meantime though, if you buy $5000 of an ETF, a typical brokerage account will charge you less than $10 for the trade. That works out to two-tenths of a percent, far less than the typical 2%+ premium you’d pay for buying gold bullion. Also, an ETF may be more cost-efficient for holding with expense ratios as low as 0.4%. If you hold physical gold you have to store it somewhere, often in a safe. Depending on how much you have you may want to put it on your homeowners insurance and that may raise your premiums. You also face the risk of theft – a real problem here in South Florida where residential burglaries seem all too common. And there’s even the simple risk you might lose your coins. With that said, there are key advantages to holding physical coins and other bullion. First, there’s the immeasurable value of possession, which gives some people a feeling they don’t get from their quarterly IRA statement. Tancer points something few think about with their investments – counterparty risk. When you buy capitec shares, or any other shares in fact, in an ETF or other investment, you are trusting that the investment company will honor its contract with you. The investing world includes an unknown number Madoffs, Enrons, and MF Globals. If a counterparty you’ve invested with or in goes under, you are left with paper that may be worthless. Investing in physical coins avoids that counterparty risk completely. Within the investors who buy coins, there’s a subset who are focused on a different kind of risk. The world of preppers has become somewhat famous thanks to the NatGeo TV show Doomsday Preppers. Of course that show tends to portray the extremes. Most preppers are concerned about the danger of scenarios that really can and do happen in the world, such as hurricanes and economic crises. This year we saw bank depositors in Cyprus take a large “haircut” on their deposits. You can read about that in Forbes and Reuters. Holding physical coins is generally perceived as safer from this kind of risk. Of course the government can still try to take that from you, but it’s far harder for them to do so. Roosevelt did it in 1933, followed by silver. Some people turned their gold in. A few who did not were prosecuted. But the government did not send agents door-to-door to ransack houses. Some believe that the wealthy shipped their gold and silver to other countries for safe-keeping. Coins are also portable and relatively easy to hide. Most investment advisors encourage portfolio diversification. Physical possession of some portion of your portfolio can be a form of that.
The Palm Beach Sheriff reports an unusual theft at the Toys R Us in Mission Bay Plaza: The parents apparently trained their kids to undo security devices from electronics so that the parents could get them out of the store. Here’s a short version of the video, showing the family as the enter the store. A much longer version is at the bottom of this post.
On October 28, 2013, at approximately 7:30 pm, deputies responded to Toys R Us located in the 20000 block of South State Road 7, Boca Raton. Upon arrival deputies were advised by store manager that a family of nine, one adult male, one adult female and seven minor children entered the electronics portion of the store where the tables are displayed. The minor children appeared in and out of the video as if they were climbing under the cabinets. It is believed by Toys R Us management, that the children were instructed by the parents to undo the security devices which are attached to the tablets. It is believed that children were successful in removing at least two of the devices. The video shows the two adults walked by the shelves picked up two tablets; one blue Tabeo E2 and one Polaroid 10.1 tablet concealed them and together all left the store. The male suspect is black, approximately 40 years of age, black hair, brown eyes, and weighs approximately 230 lbs. The female suspect is black, approximately 40 years of age, black hair, brown eyes, and weighs 180 lbs. Suspect children, total of 7, ages range between 3 yrs. and 13 yrs. old. Surveillance video shows the family entered the store at 7:01 pm and exited the store at 7:20 pm. Entered the electronics aisle at 7:02 pm, milled around until 7:18 pm when the adults returned to the aisles and removed both tablets. The family is then seen on video exiting the store at 7:20 pm. If anyone can identify this family of suspects they are urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-458-TIPS.
–Update: I just spoke with Jason Samreny who was described by the person who referred him to me as VP of leasing for the plaza. He indicated that they are adding 202 “temporary” parking spaces and they should be ready by December 1st. That would be a roughly 18% increase. The word temporary is something the county applies to them. From the way he said it, it sounded like they might actually be permanent. Regarding a long-term solution to the parking problem he declined to comment other than to say they’re working on it. I asked specifically about a parking structure and he said he couldn’t comment. I also asked about the multi-unit residential buildings (i.e. apartments or condos) that are in the plans filed with the county. He said he couldn’t say anything about that either. He did make a point to thank us for our patronage and positive comments about the theater, restaurants and stores. We hope that the additional parking is sufficient. –See bottom for plan document showing buildings in proposed parking area.– We took a look at the new parking area being added to Delray Marketplace yesterday. This is on the north side of the Frank Theatre, close to Lyons Road. In the photo at top you can see the back side of the theater on the left and the area they’re working on. There is a lot of room but it’s impossible to tell how many spaces this will add. It’s our impression that the plaza currently has less than 1100 spaces (Mr. Samreny says it’s a bit over 1100, though we saw a number in documents indicating 1050). According to a county document from January, this space north of the theater was intended for multifamily residential buildings. See picture at bottom. It’s unclear how much of the space will go to that as opposed to parking. The picture below shows a close up of the work we saw yesterday.
Finally, here is a view from the west side of the area looking toward Lyons.
We at West Boca News are fans of a Delray Marketplace but the parking remains a disappointment. —- Update: We found a plan document that’s fairly recent, showing that much of this area will be occupied by residential buildings. See image below:
