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How a spell cast by Merlin the magician led an art-collecting developer to Lake Worth Beach


A Merlin the Magician jug by Royal Doulton launched the decorative glass collection of Arthur Wiener, shown at right in 2016 at the Smithsonian Museum Craft Show, where he loaned some of his Chihuly pieces. (WMODA)

DEVELOPER ARTHUR WIENER’S journey to Lake Worth Beach, where he wants to build a $60 million mixed-use cultural arts campus downtown, started on a walk in London nearly 60 years ago. 


It was 1965. Wiener was a freshly minted business graduate from Long Island’s Adelphi University on vacation and armed with a Frommer’s “Europe on $5 a Day” guidebook.


“The best way to see a city is with your feet,” he said in an interview, recalling how he had started walking from Victoria Station when he passed a curio shop with an item in the window display that would chart the course of his life.


It was a ceramic Royal Doulton character jug of Merlin the magician from King Arthur lore. Something else on the jug caught Wiener’s eye: a yellow Jewish star on the handle.


“I’m Jewish. I'm proud to be Jewish,’’ said Wiener, who said his grandparents died in the Holocaust. “I went inside and asked the shopkeeper, ‘What is this mug with a Jewish star?’ And the guy said, ‘You didn't know Merlin the magician was Jewish?’’’


Skeptical about the salesman’s dubious pitch, Wiener bought the piece anyway, blowing his daily budget on his first fired-arts acquisition. It would not be his last. 


Over the next 50-plus years, between working as a lawyer and real-estate developer, he amassed a collection of 15,000 ceramic and glass pottery pieces, keeping much of it at his home in the Hamptons and warehouses before opening a place to share it all with the public in 2014, the Wiener Museum of Decorative Arts


Merlin cast a spell on young Arthur Wiener that day in London, as a WMODA blog whimsically notes. And nearly 60 years later, it’s not a stretch to say that Wiener has cast his own spell of sorts on Lake Worth Beach. 


City officials eager to revitalize a downtown that has seen better days have mostly embraced his proposal to build a permanent 33,000-square-foot home for his collection on Lake Avenue in the heart of downtown. The museum project includes an adjoining apartment complex and a new parking garage. 


Early rendition of the Wiener Museum of Decorate Arts in Lake Worth Beach. (WMODA)

Wiener’s development firm, Brooklyn-based United Management, operating in Lake Worth Beach as Sunshine Lake Worth Development, would build the museum and 110 apartments on 1.7 acres donated by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. 


The parking garage, estimated to cost at least $8.5 million, would be built by UM in partnership with the city and CRA on an existing surface lot on K Street, a block west of the museum and apartments.


Wiener, who lives part-time in Sunny Isles Beach, had never set foot in Lake Worth Beach until late last year, a few months before submitting his conceptual plans to the CRA in February.


But city leaders who have toured his museum's temporary spot in Broward County seem convinced he’s the developer who can help them pull off the most ambitious downtown project since the recently started Gulfstream Hotel renovation. 


WMODA will offer not just housing, parking and tax revenue, city officials say, but also a tourist destination showcasing some of the world’s finest decorative pottery, porcelain, glass and ceramics, including pieces dating back to the 18th century. 


“This could be a collection that’s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's that level. And to bring that to the city is an amazing opportunity for all of us,’’ Mayor Betty Resch said Oct. 15 when the commission voted 4-1 to move forward with the project.


Commissioner Sarah Malega admitted she’s not an art aficionado but said she was blown away during a visit to the museum, located since last year in a warehouse district west of Interstate 95 in Hollywood after opening in 2014 in Dania Beach.


As “someone who’s not into art, I don't know a Picasso from a Monet, (but) I was overwhelmed with emotion,’’ she said.



Wiener has told city leaders the apartments are a critical piece of the project because his business model relies on revenue from the rents to help subsidize the museum’s operating costs. (He said the annual operating costs in Dania Beach were “at least $700,000.’’ His team is working on projections for the Lake Worth Beach museum.)


“I'm not gonna be here forever,’’ Wiener, 80, said with a hint of dark humor. “I want my kids to be in an atmosphere where the people appreciate what I have built up.’’ 


United Management, with a portfolio of real estate holdings in New York City and Washington, D.C., has never built anything in South Florida. But most Lake Worth Beach officials have had only good things to say about the WMODA project team  since negotiations began in February. Those officials believe Wiener, his family and their consultants have been cooperative, sincere and transparent. 


“You look into Mr. Wiener’s eyes and you know he's not trying to make money. This is his love and he is just trying to find a place to land,” Commissioner Mimi May said earlier this year. “But he also doesn't want to burden his family with having to pay for (operating the museum) forever. We couldn't have a better synergistic relationship with this.”


Others in town are not as enthusiastic.


Commissioner Chris McVoy said he has heard concerns from constituents that the city is rushing the project without adequate due diligence to protect the interests of taxpayers. 


WMODA hosted a virtual public meeting in April and a charrette in May, and the project has been discussed in other public meetings since February. But the financial details, including a combined $15.4 million the city and CRA would commit, were first made public Oct. 1. 


Those financial details were discussed in public at a joint City Commission and CRA Board workshop Oct. 7. The next day, the CRA board approved the land deal. 


A few days earlier, McVoy asked city officials to postpone the meetings so residents could prepare for Hurricane Milton, which made landfall Oct. 9 on Florida’s southwest coast. 



“A lot of people have said to me they felt this was very fast tracked, that it's getting rammed through,’’ McVoy said before casting the lone ‘no’ vote Oct. 15. “Even in the middle of a Cat 5 hurricane that was aimed at the state, we couldn't possibly slow it down, we couldn't possibly reschedule the meeting. That gives people the impression that somebody is in a big hurry. That doesn't build confidence.’’


McVoy also raised questions, which he said have gone unanswered, about why the CRA didn’t seek independent appraisals of the 1.7 acres before donating the land to WMODA. The city and CRA have put the land’s value at $3.3 million, but that’s based on what they paid for it years ago. 


McVoy reminded commissioners about a $250 million project in Boynton Beach that “went south,” turning into what a 2021 Palm Beach Post editorial called “a hot mess” and “a cautionary tale for Lake Worth Beach, Riviera Beach, West Palm Beach and other Palm Beach County communities that hope to spark excitement through big municipal investments.’’


“It's wonderful to be enthusiastic about a project, but that's not our role,’’ he said before he was cut off at the expiration of the five-minute limit for individual commissioner comments. “Our role is to make sure we are doing the due diligence, the fiscal responsibility.’’


May took exception to McVoy’s claim that staff has not done enough due diligence. She said she is confident that lawyers and staff for both the city and CRA have studied the proposal “with a fine-tooth comb.”  


Commissioners are scheduled to vote Oct. 29 on whether to commit $7.5 million in public money to the first part of the project, a parking garage on K Street.


“Let's keep moving forward. This city needs this kind of boost,’’ Mayor Resch said Oct. 15.


“These folks have been talking to us, these folks have been working with us and listening to us, and I have no reason to think that won't continue,” she said.  


 

Arthur and Paulette Wiener (center) with their four children. (WMODA)

At public meetings this year, United Management has described itself as a family company launched 80 years ago. A WMODA powerpoint presentation includes a family photo of Arthur Wiener, his wife, Paulette, and their four children, and images of recent United Management projects, all in New York City.


Wiener’s wife and two daughters are officers in the company, continuing a family trend that started for Arthur in the 1960s when he began working for Wiener Realty, launched by his parents after they immigrated to New York from eastern Europe just before the Holocaust.


“Their family was totally wiped out,’’ he said in an interview, repeating details he has shared at public meetings. “I never had the opportunity of knowing my grandfather, my grandmother, cousins nephews, thanks to Heir Hitler.’’


After arriving from Lithuania, Arthur’s father, Paul, melted a gold watch, a family heirloom, in a Brooklyn basement to start his dental technician business. His mother, Rose, came from Hungary and worked in a dress factory. 


They met in night school to learn English, said Arthur, the oldest of their six children. 


By the 1950s, Paul and Rose had started their real estate business.  Joining them would be Arthur, who in 1968 graduated from Boston College Law School, and his two brothers, Joel and Jonathan.

 

Wiener Realty would grow and expand, forming other companies, some named after Paul and Rose’s children, even if the named child played no role in the company. 


By 1983, Arthur and Joel were the controlling partners of Wiener Realtors, owning and managing 47 apartment buildings with about 3,000 rent-stabilized apartments in four boroughs, according to stories that year in the New York Daily News and Staten Island Advance. 


Those 1983 stories reported a settlement in which Wiener Realtors agreed to refund tenants more than $150,000 in rent overcharges. In 17 instances, building superintendents allegedly got kickbacks averaging $250 for showing available apartments to prospective tenants, the newspapers said, reporting the results of an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s Consumer Frauds Bureau.


The company denied any knowledge of the “key money” scam and agreed to the settlement without admitting wrongdoing. 

 

“Arthur has never been investigated for fraud and nor do we see anything in the (1983) article that alleges fraud,’’ the family said in a statement released by a WMODA consultant in response to questions from ByJoeCapozzi.com


“By contrast, this appears to be an administrative matter in which the Attorney General indicates it is a prolific problem across NYC at the time and was resolved with monetary refund payments with interest and no admission of wrongdoing,’’ the statement read. 


Asked if Arthur has ever been investigated for other real-estate complaints, the company said, “there are none reported by counsel and in terms of real estate complaints, yes anyone can make a complaint to the City about apartment conditions. We do not have a comprehensive list or statistics of these.’’


Arthur left Wiener Realty in 1993 to start United Management.


In 1996, Joel Wiener founded Pinnacle Group, now headquartered in Manhattan. The company’s real estate holdings jumped to $1 billion in 2017 from $145 million in 2001 and include 10,000 mostly rent-regulated apartments across every New York City borough except Staten Island, according to The Real Deal


Pinnacle’s growth has attracted legal scrutiny and complaints from tenants, according to published reports


Joel Wiener has never worked for United Management and “has nothing to do with” WMODA’s Lake Worth Beach project “or any of Arthur’s businesses or charitable interests,’’ said WMODA consultant Renee Miller. 


Arthur Wiener has never worked for Pinnacle Group, she said. 


According to Dun & Bradstreet, Wiener Realty, led by Joel Wiener, has or at some time had an office in the same Brooklyn building as United Management. That building, built in 1891 at 166 Montague Street, was converted by United Management in 2010 from offices to upscale condos in a $10 million historic preservation renovation, according to Architect Magazine



The 166 Montague St. renovation is mentioned in WMODA’s Lake Worth Beach powerpoint as one of three recent UM projects, including The Dahlia, an Upper West Side luxury condo, and One Sullivan Place, a Brooklyn building that includes market-rate and senior affordable housing.


“While these buildings don’t represent, of course, what we would present here in Lake Worth Beach, the reason I am sharing that with you is (because) I want to share the scope, the scale, our commitment to preservation, our experience and all of those things that we would bring here to Lake Worth Beach,’’ Miller said at a CRA presentation in February. 


Arthur Wiener said at least three other cities were interested in the WMODA project before he started negotiating with Lake Worth Beach. He would not identify the other cities. 


Miller offered assurances to city officials that the city’s and CRA’s assets are protected by language in the development and property sale agreements. That language finds the developer in default “if we don't do what we are supposed to do,’’ she said.


Although the CRA voted in early October to donate the land for the project, WMODA can’t close on the property until building permits are issued after a lengthy review process spelled out in city ordinances. 


“We also have to have proof of financing locked in,’’ Miller told commissioners. “All of that has to happen before we can close. Once we close, we have a timeline to construct. If we don't meet the timeline, you have the option to (get) the property back and say we are in default.’’ 


The K Street garage would be built first with a goal of being completed by late 2026. The museum would be built next, followed by the residential portion. The museum is projected to be done by summer 2027 and the apartment complex by fall 2028.


The museum will feature a new permanent art installation and “immersive experience” by noted glass artist Dale Chihuly. The WMODA team expects the museum to attract 50,000 visitors a year. The team also expects the project to generate $54 million in resident and visitor spending in the downtown over the first 10 years. 


Arthur Wiener said he is eager to share his collection with the public and offer free arts classes to underprivileged children. "Give them a drawing pad, give them a potter's wheel to get their hands dirty. That's important to me,'' he said.


“I’m a Brooklyn boy,’’ he said. “I didn't want to be like those billionaires that pay $100 million for a Picasso and hang it in their house and not share it.’’ 


The museum is his legacy project, he said, his way of giving back to the country that took his parents in before the Holocaust. 


“God has been good to my family,’’ he said in April. “I really want to share what I have after I'm dead with the community, with society. That's it, pure and simple. ’’


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About the author


Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.


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