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Editor's note: Boca Raton's Mizner Park is celebrating its 35th anniversary today. This story about the upscale plaza originally ran in the Palm Beach Post on Jan. 21, 2016. It has been edited for updating and length. Mizner Park is 35 years old! Here's more from a 2011 column: Once, downtown Boca Raton was a ghost town, with just 73 housing units and the lowest office rents in the county. That changed with the arrival of one of the first, and most popular, of Palm Beach County's iconic outdoor shopping and entertainment complexes: Mizner Park.The 30-acre "mixed use" center opened Jan. 11, 1991, and now sports about 45 retail shops and restaurants along with an amphitheater, 262,000 square feet of office space; 272 residential units, and the Plaza Real promenade.Mizner Park in Boca Raton, Fla.In October 2010, the American Planning Association declared Plaza Real one of 10 top spots on its annual Great Places in America program. The avenue features palm trees, benches, three wrought-iron gazebos, public art, and four fountains.Max's Grille has been a longtime anchor restaurant at Mizner Park. It changed ownership in 2024 but remains as popular as ever.Mizner Park was named, of course, for Addison Mizner, the architect who, after helping Henry Flagler build Palm Beach, built Boca Raton from the ground up — all in pink. Boca Raton, which sported fewer than 1,000 residents in 1950, enjoyed a population explosion; but by the late 1980s, downtown had become forlorn as people and business spread to the suburbs. Its symbol — the Boca Mall — opened in 1973. Nostalgia-lovers will recall the Jefferson and Britts department stores, along with a small specialty stores and eateries, plus the Caldwell Theatre.The outdoor amphitheater opened in November 2002 as the Count de Hoernle Amphitheater, The city took over ownership in 2010 and renamed it the Mizner Park Amphitheater.Plagued by poor management, flood-prone parking lots and unpopular store selection, the mall became a rundown eyesore that one resident described as a "big blimp hangar." It was razed in August 1989, after the Dive Bar seafood joint and saloon ended a long holdout. The city council then approved $68 million in bond money, along with $50 million in "infrastructure" improvements, for Mizner Park.Pure Green Juice Bar at Mizner Park offers visitors handcrafted and made-to-order smoothies, açaí bowls and cold-pressed juices.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs the project progressed, some groused about parking and access and argued the city didn't live up to its promise that Mizner would be as much for culture as for shopping and dining.The center's 272 apartments sit atop the retail spaces.In the next 12 years, partly because of Mizner Park's success, area property values jumped 14-fold.The day of its grand opening, Community Redevelopment agency chair Jamie Snyder gushed, "our downtown now has a heart."If you goMizner Park is at 327 Plaza Real in Boca Raton.Info: 561-362-0606; www.miznerpark.comEliot Kleinberg is a former staff writer for The Palm Beach Post and the author of numerous books about Florida and its history.