Voters assemble!
It's a bright, shiny election day in 17 Palm Beach County cities and towns. Also for you today, a real estate mystery, Baby Birkin NFTs, pushing back against climate change, and pie.
Today’s newsletter is a 6-minute read.
🗳️ First up: Balance of power at stake in today’s elections
We bow to the wisdom of Coastal Star Editor Mary Kate Leming, who writes, “When it seems as if there are more election signs lining the street than the number of people likely to vote, it must be municipal election season.”
National elections get all the ink, but it’s local democracy that makes the daily difference in our lives. In Delray Beach and Ocean Ridge today, elections could shift the balance of power, affecting residents for years.
Up for grabs: the Delray Beach City Commission power structure.
Some of the commission’s most controversial votes have been along 3-2 lines. For instance, Mayor Shelley Petrolia and Commissioners Shirley Johnson and Juli Casale voted to cut decades-long ties with a nonprofit running Old School Square, the town’s jewel of a cultural arts center.
Johnson is term-limited out, and Casale is up for reelection.
It’s been a ferocious campaign. An old ethics violation, a current conflict of interest allegation, a failed business and social media blasts are dogging the four candidates vying for Seats 2 and 4.
There was already plenty to debate. The Old School Square lease is in court. So is a city manager fired by the Petrolia-Johnson-Casale voting bloc.
And development is on everyone’s mind. Running for the seat now held by Casale, Rob Long has supported some — though not all — development projects; Casale has balked at what she sees as overdevelopment. Angie Gray, running for the seat vacated by Johnson, has also voiced concerns over development.
(Though we have heard no one worried over the criminal charges of a Ponzi scheme at 301 SE 1st Avenue, site of a proposed apartment complex.)
The backstory: Read the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s news coverage of the Delray race here and its editorial endorsements here. (Some readers may encounter a paywall.)
Part 2: Ocean Ridge: Small, but loud
In tiny Ocean Ridge, shouting matches have erupted over public access to the town’s beach. The police chief and building department head have resigned. The building department has been criticized as inflexible.
Deeply divided, the council abruptly withdrew a town manager job offer to Lynne Ladner last month after three council members expressed concerns she was more receptive to positions taken by the other two council members, the Coastal Star reported.
The candidates: Mayor Susan Hurlburt, Commissioner Martin Wiescholek and challenger Carolyn Cassidy. The two candidates with the most votes will win three-year terms. A Cassidy victory could shift power to herself and two other commissioners she has shown a willingness to work with.
The Backstory: Read The Coastal Star’s coverage of big doings in Ocean Ridge here.
Zoom out: There are also elections today in 15 other cities and towns: Atlantis, Belle Glade, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Highland Beach, Hypoluxo, Juno Beach, Lake Clarke Shores, Lake Park, Lantana, Mangonia Park, Palm Beach Shores, Palm Springs, South Bay, Tequesta.
Of note: Some of the county’s biggest cities, including West Palm Beach, Jupiter and Palm Beach Gardens, have no contested races.
🔎 Mystery solved
We here at Stet love a good mystery.
And what’s better than a secret Delaware-based corporation investing $14.5 million in one of our community’s most vulnerable neighborhoods? Could the new investor make good on decades of attempts to stabilize a predominantly Black neighborhood on the edge of a red-hot downtown? Or could it be an early step toward the feared prospect of gentrification, where low-income residents are forced out by rising rents?
So we did some checking and we found out the buyer of more than 50 homes, mostly in West Palm Beach’s Historic Northwest Neighborhood, is … drumroll please … Beacon Ridge Capital Management.
That’s right. Beacon Ridge Capital Management of Boca Raton. Never heard of them?
You’re not alone.
Beacon is a “real estate investment management and advisory firm” specializing in single-family rentals. Its chairman and CEO, Mark DeSario, and several top executives, previously worked at Merrill Lynch. DeSario is on the board of Africa Crest Education Holdings, a builder of schools in Africa that is backed by Dubai Investments PJSC. He also lists himself as chairman of Investbridge Capital, based in London and Dubai.
Doing business in Florida as Rosemary 1 WPB, Beacon dropped $14.5 million in July 2022 to buy what’s left of a 1990s public-private investment once known as Rosemary Village. Its identity became clear in public records related to the transfer of tax credits. The land sale but not the buyer’s identity was first disclosed that same month by The Palm Beach Post.
As for its plans, Beacon isn’t ready to say.
But we know this: The previous owner, Miami developer Tarek Kirschen, described the mystery company to The Post’s Kimberly Miller as an “investment fund that manages multifamily,” adding “they want to keep it affordable housing.”
It looks like they’re here to stay: Property records reveal that so far in 2023, Beacon has hired a roofer to replace roofs on 21 homes.
👜 The little Baby Birkin and the big, bad metaverse
When California artist Mason Rothschild crafted his now-infamous Baby Birkin handbag, Paris fashion house Hermes did not sue.
Hermes created the legendary Birkin Bag, which may have started as a pricey place for combs, coins and the occasional gum wrapper, but is now in collector territory: Birkin purses can command five — and even six — figures.
Hermes says in court papers that it did not sue over Rothschild’s use of its prized Birkin trademark because the Baby Birkin was art.
It also is not a purse.
The Baby Birkin is an NFT, a digital image of a Birkin bag with a fetus inside. It went for the equivalent of $23,500.
The money was also not quite real. The virtual bag was purchased with Ethereum cryptocurrency.
It was only after Delray Beach businessman Jeffrey Berk and Rothschild began discussing selling dozens of MetaBirkins — a bevy of NFTs — that Hermes loosed its lawyers on the artist, court documents show.
The local businessman was never alleged to be part of any impropriety. He was simply swept up in what some characterized as a landmark case, the first to challenge ownership boundaries between real-world trademark law and metaverse sales of non-material goods.
NFTs are like pictures of things that are not quite pictures. Or things.
In the weeds: An NFT, or non-fungible token, is an intangible marker connected to a unique piece of digital art, music or other item.
Multiple Birkin NFTs seemed more like commerce than art to Hermes. It’s the Birkin name that makes an NFT Birkin worth buying, they argued. And they own the name.
Now, the verdict on furry, avant-garde Birkins is in. After a six-day trial, a jury last month found the artist guilty of patent infringement and cybersquatting. He was ordered to pay Hermes, a $12.4 billion business, $133,000.
🌊 Quiz answer: What $4.4 billion could get us
Hello, quizmasters!
Last week, we gave you this scenario. If Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties plow $4.4 billion into adapting buildings for sea level rise, how many billions of dollars in building damage will be averted through 2070?
And the answer is: $17.6 billion, according to The Urban Land Institute’s 2020 study, “The Business Case for Resilience in Southeast Florida.”
That may not sound like a massive figure. But it does represent a 300 percent return on investment. Communitywide adaptation would push the avoided damages to more than $37 billion for the region.
And if your adapted home or office building is still high and dry in 47 years? Priceless.
Don’t take our word for it! You can read the report for yourself, here.
561 insider: Happy π Day!
Author Gretchen Rubin advises that one path to happiness is to elevate an average day.
“Celebrating minor holidays is fun,” she writes. “It’s low-stress, and it helps make memories.”
Enter Pi Day. It was physicist Larry Shaw who connected March 14 with the mathematical constant 3.14159, which is, of course, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
Shaw celebrated the first Pi Day at the Exploratorium in San Francisco with fruit pies and tea in 1988.
The museum told USA Today that Shaw led Pi Day parades there every year until he died in 2017.
🍰 Venerable Lake Worth bakery The Upper Crust has embraced the holiday with its Pi(e) Day Pop Up sale from 10 am to 2 pm today.
Choose from goods including German chocolate π ($35), Pecan π ($36), Bumbleberry π ($35), shortbread cookies (½-dozen, $26.50), as well as some pi merch while supplies last.
The Upper Crust Pie Bakery, 2015 N. Dixie Highway. (561) 586-5456.
Of note: You can celebrate with any circular food.
🔭 Add some science to the fun by taking NASA’s 10th annual Pi Day Challenge, and finding out 18 ways NASA uses pi.
This day reminds us that few things in life are constant – except pi.
🦉 As you sporting Stetters put the finishing touches on NCAA Tournament brackets, a shout-out to the home team, our Fighting Owls, the Florida Atlantic University men. They take the court at 9:20 pm Friday as the No. 9 seed against No. 8 seed Memphis Tigers in the East Region. 🏀
☘️ Friday is also St. Patrick’s Day, and O’Shea’s Irish Fest block party just seems to get bigger each year.
On tap for 2023: a band from Ireland, a beer tent, Irish dancers, a traditional Irish food menu, and a kids zone. Doors open at 9 am. The music starts 30 minutes later.
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