“Restaurants on their way to finding homes in historic downtown Boynton houses”

Restaurants on their way to finding homes in historic downtown Boynton houses

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 07:40 PM PDT

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

BOYNTON BEACH — City commissioners, acting as the Community Redevelopment Agency board, approved moving forward with turning two small CRA-owned historic houses in the downtown area into restaurants.

The Magnuson House, at 211 E. Ocean Ave, will become Oscar's Restaurant, an organic café serving lunch and dinner seven days a week.

The restaurant owners are offering to pay the CRA $18,000 annually to lease the 1,736-square-foot space for three to five years, with an exclusive option to buy the property for its appraised value of $340,000 after the first year of operation.

Commissioner Bill Orlove made the motion to approve the restaurant.

"It has the potential of being a nice, little growing restaurant community," he said. "It could be a trigger to bring in other businesses."

The two-story building is known as the Magnuson House because it was built about 1910 by Oscar Sten Magnuson, a Swedish immigrant and farmer. His wife, Eunice Benson Magnuson, was one of the first town clerks.

The Ruth Jones Cottage, which sits at 201 N.E. First St. and would be moved to the southwest corner of East Ocean Avenue and Southeast Fourth Street later this year, will become 201 Trading Post. The restaurant proposal calls for a combined eat-in restaurant, a market for prepared meals to go and a catering service.

The restaurant owner is asking for no rent for the first year.

The cottage, which was built in 1940, was the home of Ruth Jones until about two years ago. She and her late husband, Mason, a farmer and member of a Boynton pioneer family, raised five children there. The home was built in 1940.

The new location of the house would be next to an existing public parking lot with 21 parking spaces.

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