f e at u r e sto ry
By Maritza Cosano
Culture, Lifestyle, and Community
Photos: Addiel Perera, WPB Magazine
WPB Magazine Editor
I
recall, as a girl of twelve or thirteen, discovering a
photograph of my mother taken a few years before I was
born. In the image, my mother is sitting on a white plush
chair in a room that looks like something out of an old
Spanish mission home, kind of like the ones you see in
our city’s historic districts Flamingo Park and El Cid. She is
laughing as I had never seen her laugh in life, with her head
tilted back, completely taken by the elation. Surrounding her
are things that now I would call vintage and can find at stores
like Gracie Street Interior Design on South Narcissus Avenue
in downtown West Palm Beach, a place I’ve come to love.
I do not feel like I am betraying Miami or Fort Lauderdale,
two other great cities where I lived for a time. I do not feel like
I need to defend them, because there are so many people
just like me who simply love this city and use the handle
#Ilovewpb to express ourselves.
And just to prove my point, I went around our city asking
some people three simple questions:
1. What is it about this city that you love?
2. What do you do to make a difference in our beautiful city?
3. What would make this city even more lovable?
As we talked about our lovely city in which the waterfront
plays a key role as its most representative space, he said he
appreciated all the plans the city is designing but wished
it would look outside downtown WPB for some things like
large buildings for Class A offices that require space and
parking for over 1,000 employees. Now, that’s funny coming
from Mr. DowntownWPB himself, but he feels that, “All the
attention goes to downtown.”
Gonzalez loves the balance of historic buildings and new
structures in West Palm Beach. He’s had the opportunity to
work on historical buildings, such as Mar-a-Lago for
President Donald Trump, the Harriet Himmel Theater at
CityPlace, and the Palm Beach County Museum, as well as
other buildings throughout Palm Beach County. But perhaps
his greatest enjoyment is the Harriet building, because
according to him, it is the centerpiece of CityPlace—old
meets new—making it a unique place.
“I love WPB because it has that small town feel, where you
get to know your neighbors and the businesses,” he said
when we finally sat down at Johan’s Joe one early morning
to chat.
A Guy on Clematis, sorry I can’t refer to him by anything
than that, as I’ve grown fond of his Twitter username. I told
him he should write a book and use that as its title. Maybe he
will someday, he said. He sure moves around this city a lot.
You can catch A Guy on Clematis taking pictures at any given
downtown spot, not just on Clematis Street. That’s his way of
getting involved and talking about a city he loves so much.
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“I was born in Finland, then was raised in Cincinnati, but for
business I was traveling back and forth from there to
Germany,” he said. The last time he went to Finland, he
decided not to return to Cincinnati. He visited several other
cities in the U.S. and then he started working with
HedgeCoVest, a hedge fund technical consulting firm with an
office in downtown West Palm Beach. He began coming here,
and the more he did, the more he liked it, because as he said,
“It has that European feel.”
Perhaps he is not the only one who feels this way. Rick
Gonzalez, owner of REG Architects, located at 300 Clematis
Street, said, “I’m very excited about West Palm Beach, I think
there’s a lot of future here, and connectivity is a big factor.”
On the road, I scanned multiple businesses to contact till
I decided to go directly to Twitter, my source of news these
days. A Guy on Clematis, [handler for Aaron Wormus], had
just liked one of my tweets and I reciprocated in return. Now,
this guy loves West Palm Beach. I was curious to know why.
So I reached out to him beyond the “social media” highway.
But some things call to me from the past. I know why I
came here from Madrid, Spain, in the mid-1970s with my
family. These are my most vivid child memories. And like me,
Aaron’s motivation is inspiring.
“The city has done a great job in the last thirty years, but
we need to look at the next thirty,” he said, recalling the first
strong West Palm Beach Mayor Nancy Graham’s words, “We
don’t need to be the biggest city in Florida. We need to be
the best mid-size city in Florida.”
With that idea comes connectivity and that translates to
mobility. We live in a hot humid climate. So, we need more
shade. For example, Gonzalez lives ten blocks from his office
on Clematis Street and S. Olive. If there were more shade,
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j u ly t h r u s e p t e m b e r
2017