From The Real Deal: "Former CRA directors talk Delray Beach, WPB development"

Note: For new residents to Lake Worth there's a special treat below. From the article in The Real Deal by Dan Weil:

     Branding a blighted downtown as an arts and entertainment district, making streets more pedestrian-friendly and luring new restaurants helped redevelop the urban cores of Delray Beach and West Palm Beach, according to two former community redevelopment leaders who have turned their experience into a book.
     Christopher Brown, former Community Redevelopment Agency director in Delray Beach, and Kim Briesemeister, who held that position in West Palm Beach, have just put out a handbook on urban development, “Reinventing Your City.” 

[and. . .]

     In Delray Beach, when Brown started on the job in 1991, the city looked like “Death Valley” after 5 p.m., with no one on the streets, [emphasis added] he said. Brown and his colleagues started by branding downtown as an “arts and entertainment” destination. Atlantic Avenue was narrowed, sidewalks were widened, utilities were placed underground, and streetlights were added. Then decrepit parking lots were renovated. 

[and. . .]

     Today, Briesemeister is impressed with the government’s [West Palm Beach] continued focus on the waterfront, as evidenced by the encouragement of a hotel/retail/residential development on the site of the old City Hall at 200 2nd Street. She also lauds the city’s efforts to develop the Northwood and near Northwest neighborhoods.

If you're a new or recent resident to the little City of Lake Worth you will learn a lot reading this about Lake Worth's CRA, the $23 million NSP2 grant, and pay special attention to who was opposed to applying for the money which the CRA later received. This video from 2012 will also explain a lot: