One of the concerns about FAU’s Boca Raton campus is that it’s not part of a “college town” because, although the university has 30k students and remains the largest employer in the city, there has not been an intense focus on student-based businesses until recently.
Our new university president, Dr. John Kelly, has made it his mission to help transform Boca Raton into a more college student-friendly area like his previous institution, Clemson. To that end he commissioned the School of Architecture and Urban Planning to present a vision for 20th Street, a mostly run-down industrial area leading east from campus towards Federal Highway. The Boca Ration City Council has been wanting to revitalize this area for some time now and has made it one of their top goals to transform it into a student district as well.
A vision was presented mixing student housing, student services, retail, restaurants and (one would imagine) college bars along a renovated 20th Street, which itself was recently subject to a Student Government poll to rename it to something like Owl Avenue (final name choice pending).
It’s ambitious but will happen, albeit slowly as the City secures funding to bury power lines, create pedestrian tables and redo sidewalks and medians. The private sector will have to start buying up properties along the way, knock them down and erect the mixed-use housing. This doesn’t happen overnight but is projected to be done over the course of, say, the next 5-10 years.
Three student housing project already exist along 20th Street, with another one coming online in the next two years for an additional 600+ beds. An FAU sports apparel store, Go Greek shop and FAU-themed gas station are open now, as is a restaurant called Community Table with $1 pizza slices that caters to FAU students. A plaza adjacent to one of the student housing complexes has been purchased and renamed The Shoppes at University Park and is looking to bring in more student-friendly businesses. They will also be the home of Coach Schnellenberger’s Steakhouse and Sports Theatre (Schnellenberger was the founding father and coach of FAU football for over a decade)
So for those of you worried about FAU not being a “college town”, in the next decade we’ll have University Commons to the south, Owl Avenue to the east, University Village to the north, and I-95 to the west.
