Wringing Every Last Drop Out of the Old Before Ringing in the New Seacoast Utility Authority replaces aging headquarters with $21 million campus Joel Engelhardt When you turn on your faucet, you expect water to come gushing out. When you flush your toilet, you expect the water to go swirling away. In Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Park, North Palm Beach, and Juno Beach, that has meant relying on the Seacoast Utility Authority, housed for decades in its low-slung, aging headquarters next to the water plant on Hood Road. Seacoast remains, but after 40 years its headquarters is gone. In April, the utility, which was started in 1955 by Lake Park and Palm Beach Gardens founder John D. MacArthur, completed its move into a stylish series of blue buildings accented by brown stone that nearly doubles its space, protects against hurricanes, and modernizes meeting rooms, warehouse space,
and laboratories (see photo at the top of the page). The $21.5 million project, marked by the late August 2020 demolition of the old headquarters, is paid for—without any new debt—by the utility’s 50,800 customers through their monthly bills. The new buildings, covering more than 50,000 square feet, are the legacy of Rim Bishop, Seacoast’s director since the four cities and the county banded together in 1988 to buy the system for $65 million from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. But that’s just a small part of the 69-yearold director’s legacy, said Bob Weisman, the retired county administrator who has served as the county’s representative on the Seacoast board since 1988. “It’s an understatement to say the new office is his legacy. The way Seacoast has run over the last 30 years is his legacy,” Weisman said. Architect Rick Gonzalez, whose West Palm Beach firm REG Architects designed the
The 1980 administrative building at Seacoast Utility Authority torn down in 2020 to make way for the $21.5 million hurricane hardened replacement. (photo: courtesy of Rim Bishop)
28 May 2021 • Florida Water Resources Journal
new building in what he called a contemporary, modern style “with a little bit of rustic thrown in,” described the old building as basically an 80-footlong double wide. That’s not quite how Bishop sees the 1980 building Seacoast inherited when it bought the system. “Rather than a double wide, I’d call it manufactured housing,” said Bishop, who notes that the building was marred in recent years by leaky roofs and windows, and a corroded steel skeleton. “We got 40 years out of a building that was temporary.” The old 14,000-square-foot administration building remained standing, while the three new buildings rose behind it. “We laid it out like a campus,” Gonzalez said, referring to a design that seems prescient in the COVID-19 era, with outdoor courtyards between buildings where workers can take breaks or eat meals. “Who would have thought that COVID would have hit us.”
Another view of the 1980 administrative building at Seacoast Utility Authority. (photo: courtesy of Rim Bishop)
