Believe it or not, this was a real issue and a mystery to some...

From the Tom McGow archives comes this:

Commissioner Jennings questioned the "real" height of the Lucerne from the dais back in the summer of 2009. She said that she saw a letter from a surveyor that said that the Lucerne was 83 feet tall. She insinuated that, even though the maximum height limit in that area of the downtown was 65 feet (it is now 45 feet in this area), that somehow someone let the building be built 18 feet higher than it actually was approved for. Apparently, this had been an issue since the time of the building permit review and construction period. Certain people (eh hem) were hyper-concerned about the maximum height of the building that they saw to it to have some architectural details eliminated from the final design. You can thank these people (eh hem) for the boxy shape of the building today.

I had a meeting with Commissioner Mulvehill at the time on building height in general in the city. This was during the period where the Comprehensive Plan said that everything had to be two stories and could be three stories in some areas given special dispensations and general intercessions. In our meeting, Commissioner Mulvehill was convinced that the Lucerne was 83 feet high and she had asked Fedner (who, no fault of his own, was basically our planning department at the time without very much experience) to get a surveying instrument and determine the REAL height of the building. I'm not sure that ever happened and I don't think he had the capacity to work such a machine in the first place.

It turns out that a letter from a surveyor turned up in the file, and if you had at least half a brain, upon reading it you would conclude that the measuring point for the height of the Lucerne was at 18 feet ABOVE SEA LEVEL and, measured from there it was exactly 65 feet tall. This was a case where someone latched on to a little bit of information, added three dashes of hysteria and a couple squirts of political gamesmanship. Bananabreath, Jennings and Mulvehill were all on the same page with this one.

So, Tom McGow decided to put the matter to bed in his inimitable style and the above is the result.

And, yes good citizens of Lake Worth, the Lucerne is STILL 65 feet high. It is not growing. It was not built 18 feet higher than it should be. Oh, and just because the building's east side doesn't have windows doesn't mean that our historic Library will be torn down for another high-rise. Another hysterical claim made back-in-the-day. 

Enjoy!