Whole Foods is replacing Beall's at Jupiter Plaza
The Shoppes at Jupiter Plaza gets its biggest makeover in 20 years, Broadway Chicken is inbound, and your tap water is doing an impression of a pool.
The Shoppes at Jupiter Plaza is getting the biggest makeover it has seen in more than 20 years, and the anchor change is the one people will notice first: Whole Foods is replacing Beall's. RAM Realty is behind the overhaul of a center that is coming up on 50 years old, which is a long run for any shopping plaza and a very long one in South Florida. The community is reacting, and that tracks — swapping one anchor tenant for another changes how a whole plaza gets used. For now the headline fact is simple: the grocery store is changing, and the center around it is being overhauled.
Broadway Chicken is coming to Jupiter
Broadway Chicken is opening in Jupiter. The menu is a straight run at the category: crispy chicken sandwiches, hand-breaded tenders, wings, loaded fries and a variety of signature sauces. Every one of those items already has a defender somewhere in this town, so another contender on a Friday night is not a small development. Tenders and wings on the same board also means one stop can feed a table of adults and a carful of kids without negotiation. The menu is the whole pitch at this stage, and it is a legible one.
Why your tap water tastes like the deep end
If your water has tasted faintly like a swimming pool lately, that is the utility, not your imagination. Jupiter is running free chlorine through the system instead of the usual combined chlorine, a scrub of the distribution lines meant to keep bacterial growth from taking hold, and it continues through August 4. The town says the water stays safe to drink and is tested daily; the taste and the smell are the trade-off. The people who actually need to adjust are dialysis patients, anyone keeping a fish tank or a backyard pond, and anybody whose equipment depends on highly treated water.
A town-level no on paying to park at the beach
Two things out of the latest council meeting land on actual residents. First, the council voted unanimously for Resolution 100-26, formally opposing Palm Beach County's push to expand paid parking at public beaches — a Jupiter no to the idea of paying for a spot people have used free for years. Second, $275,440 went out as a design work order for renovations at Fire Station 13, alongside a new set of fire impact fees. The council also approved a two-year, $400,000 water-treatment membrane services contract, which is the unglamorous hardware behind whatever comes out of your tap.
There is town money for the corner that always floods
If you sit on an HOA board and the same low spot goes underwater every August, Jupiter has a program for that. The Private Stormwater Improvement Grant reimburses up to 50 percent of actual construction costs for private projects inside town limits that improve water quality, reduce nuisance flooding or control erosion. The current cycle is open, with the next recurring deadline September 30. The exclusions matter as much as the money: routine maintenance does not count, and neither does anything already under way or completed. Staff reviews applications and the Town Council has to approve the agreements, so start earlier than feels necessary.
The back-to-school tax holiday runs through August 20
The back-to-school sales tax holiday runs through August 20, and Jupiter has it on the town calendar as an all-day item — 6 a.m. to 11:59 p.m., every day of the stretch. A month-long window is a generous one by the standards of these things, which mostly means the shopping does not have to be crammed into one grim Saturday alongside everyone else. There are three weeks left on it, enough runway to go once, forget something, and go again. The clock runs out on the twentieth either way.