5 days ago
A plan for warehouses, fitness center and more advances in Palm Beach County's Agricultural Reserve
Paul Okean is facing a turning point.
The plant nursery business owner has owned land in the Palm Beach County Agricultural Reserve for more than 40 years. At one point, Morningstar Nursery, Okean's business, went on to become a major supplier for large retail stores including Kmart, Kroger and Albertsons.
'My nursery days are behind me for a variety of fateful reasons. However, I am grateful for every moment they held,' Okean said during a recent County Commission meeting. 'But I also look ahead with anticipation because I now have the opportunity to begin a new chapter alongside my children.'
Okean has been trying to redevelop his more than 50 acres of land in West Delray for years, but proposals to do so have been met with concerns about disrupting the area with traffic, chipping away at the county's Ag Reserve or possibly harming the equine industry.
The most recent plan is technically two proposals: Park West North and Park West South. The north project could be on a 50-acre plot wedged at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Florida's Turnpike, east of Starkey Road. Park West South is a 10-acre plot east of Persimmon Avenue and directly south of Atlantic Avenue.
The larger Park West North pitches self-service storage, a fitness center, a manufacturing and processing space with a taproom and a warehouse with accessory office, while Park West South proposes a warehouse with accessory office.
Both Park West North and South were approved to move forward by the county commissioners but not without mixed reactions. Some people want the entire plan scrapped while others believe Okean and other farmers in the Ag Reserve should have the opportunity to redevelop the land they own into something unrelated to agriculture.
And while the commissioners voted to approve Park West for transmittal — which means the project goes to the state for review before going back to the Palm Beach County Commission — they said they hope the developers behind it make some revisions before it comes back before them sometime in the fall.
'There needs to be more conversation. There is some considerations to be made that can be done between now and when this comes back to us,' Commissioner Marci Woodward said during the meeting where the project was discussed.
The Park West project wasn't always called Park West. Originally, the plan for the about 60 acres of land was called Tenderly Reserve.
When presented to the county commissioners in the spring of last year, the project proposed more than 700 multifamily units, a 150-room hotel, hundreds of thousands of square feet of storage, commercial retail and office space, an 'indoor adventure rec and workspace,' a neighborhood grocery, workforce housing, a main street, town center and a public preserve.
At the time, members of the public and county officials mainly took issue with the development's requests for county policy exemptions. These included a request to increase density from one residential unit per 5 acres to 12 residential units per acre, a request to be exempt from a county traffic policy and a request to allot only 20% of the total project to preserve land, a little more than 16 of the 60 acres, and allow water management to count as part of that preservation.
In response to the opposition, the Park West developers scaled back, taking away the residential and hotel components and replacing it with more light industrial-type uses, such as the warehouses.
Jennifer Morton, the president of JMorton Planning and Landscape Architecture, which is representing Park West, said this request is the only request out of the four that have been made to have support from the county planning staff and the only one that does not require any zoning changes.
'We meet the specific (Agricultural Reserve) policies such as low-impact development with uses that serve the residents of the Ag Reserve,' Morton said during the meeting.
Since the proposal was known as Tenderly Reserve, Palm Beach County residents have expressed opinions about the project, varying from complete opposition to advocating for Ag Reserve landowner rights.
Some people used to be in Okean's position and urged county commissioners to approve the project. Suzanne and Joe Mulvehill, who are siblings, owned (and, in Joe Mulvehill's case, still own) land in the Ag Reserve for years as legacy farmers but ultimately had to bow out when the industry began to decline.
'This is about doing the right thing,' Suzanne Mulvehill said to the commissioners. 'This is about property rights.'
But others, such as Wellington resident David Larson, told commissioners he believes the Park West North project is 'ill-conceived and inconsistent' with the spirit of the Ag Reserve master plan.
Barbara O'Donnell, who owns horse farm Irish Acres with her husband, Joseph O'Donnell, which is just north of where Park West could be, said the development could disrupt Irish Acres' efforts.
'Our shared vision was to create a sanctuary for horses, unlike anything else in South Florida. We have 60 acres of beauty and tranquility to offer horses and their owners a chance to enjoy nature, which is slipping away to development,' O'Donnell said. 'We are recognized every year as one of the very best boarding farms in South Florida. … This requires peaceful surroundings. If this development is approved, it will destroy us.'
The county commissioners have found themselves attempting to strike a delicate balance between competing interests with the Park West project, and the most recent decision was no different. Besides Commissioner Maria Sachs, who did not want the project to move forward at all, the commissioners agreed the project should have the opportunity to go to a transmittal but should undergo modifications before it is presented to the commission again in a few months.
'I do want to see something a little less dense on the property,' County Mayor Maria Marino said. 'The community (came) out on both sides, those in support and those not in support. That's what community does. That's what commissioners do. That's what brothers and sisters do.
'Let's get it right.'
