Breaker's expansion gets thumbs up from Palm Beach planning board

Yahoo

17-03-2025

The Breakers' plans to replace its Family Entertainment Center and central parking lot are one step closer to fruition, after the town's Planning and Zoning Commission gave a thumbs-up to the resolution tied to the projects.
The commission voted 5-0 on March 6 to recommend that the Town Council approve the resolution, with conditions. Commission members want the council to consider whether The Breakers' membership program should be regulated as a special exception use; that the traffic and circulation studies are completed by the time of the council's meeting; and that The Breakers will draft an updated master plan.
Alternates Nicki McDonald, Victoria Donaldson and Matthew Ailey voted in place of commissioners Jorge Sanchez, Marilyn Beuttenmuller and Michael Vincent John Spaziani.
The Breakers' application asks that the town approve in concept multiple development proposals meant to update and improve the resort.
The proposals include a plan to replace the resort's 12,136-square-foot two-story Family Entertainment Center with a 16,675-square-foot three-story center featuring a basement, according to plans submitted to the town. The proposed center also would feature a pedestrian bridge connecting it to the Beach Club building just east of it.
The other project would replace the 550-space parking lot just north of The Breakers main entrance with a large subterranean parking lot and a small surface level lot for a combined 849 parking spaces.
At its Feb. 4 meeting, commissioners voted to defer the project, citing concerns that it could increase traffic and boost the number of hotel visitors.
The town's Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the designs for the parking garage at its Feb. 19 meeting. On Feb. 26, when the Architectural Commission reviewed the Family Entertainment Center proposal, its members voted to defer the project for two months to give designers time to improve the building's scale and streamline its design.
Less than a week before the planning commission's meeting, the activist group the Neighborhood Alliance of Palm Beach and a local resident sent out emails to residents, The Breakers CEO Paul Leone told the planning commission during its March 6 meeting.
Those emails accused The Breakers of violating the town's Comprehensive Plan. Both emails railed against The Breakers membership program, which they referred to as a private club. The emails also criticized alleged plans to close Pine Walk, take down the signal at its intersection with South County Road, and widen South County Road with an additional left-turn and right-turn lane near the hotel's property.
None of those actions are part of the project.
Leone said the content of the "egregious" emails amounted to "disinformation."
Breakers attorney James Crowley said the allegations made in the emails likely stemmed from a staff memo released a week before the meeting. The memo described the Breakers' membership program as a 'private club (for) which approval has not been sought nor granted by the Town Council,' a position Leone and Crowley vehemently disagreed with.
'There is no private club associated with this application. We are not proposing a private club,' Crowley told the commission. 'What we have is a membership program dating back to 1926.'
Town Planner Jennifer Hofmeister-Drew said that questions over classifying the membership program as a special-exception use akin to a private club falls under the purview of the Town Council, not the planning commission.
The staff memo also described the changes to neighboring roads as improvements that 'have continued to be postponed.'
'I think when some members of the public saw that, they thought as a part of this application we were going to be widening County Road and putting a turn lane in,' Crowley said. Those plans were never part of the current resolution, but instead, were conditions placed on a 1998 resolution to amend the resort's Planned Unit Development, or PUD.
Like a zoning district, a PUD sets guidelines for what can be developed within its scope but defines more specific uses than traditional zoning rules. They're a rarity in Palm Beach, the Breakers property being just one of three PUDs in town, and the only PUD with development potential, according to the town's comprehensive plan.
The issue is that the PUD's master plan still requires these conditions to be completed at some point, Hofmeister-Drew told the commission. 'Are they applicable anymore? Things have changed, and we need to look at that,' she told the commission.
Hofmeister-Drew said those outstanding conditions can be remedied by updating the PUD's master plan.
The other outstanding item in the application was data on the resort's internal traffic circulation. Crowley said that data has been collected but is currently under analysis by the Corradino Group, the town's traffic consultant.
Vice Chair Eric Christu asked whether staff considered the application completed.
Planning, Zoning and Building Director Wayne Bergman said he did consider it a completed application. Under town law, that means the planning commission must make a recommendation on the PUD application within 60 days of when Bergman signed off on the application in January.
"This is the meeting where you really should determine what recommendation you would like to make to the Town Council, if possible," Bergman said.
Bergman said the 60-day time limit is in place because of the town's outdated regulations for PUDs. Since the town's code does not have a process for modifying a planned unit development, The Breakers must follow the same process used for a new PUD.
Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach planning board OKs Breakers expansion