March 2021 - OnGardens

Wringing every last drop out of the old, before ringing in the new

Seacoast Utility Authority replaces aging headquarters with $21 million campus.

When you turn on your faucet, you expect water to come gushing out. When you flush your toilet, you expect the water to go swirling away.

In Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Park, North Palm Beach and Juno Beach, that has meant relying on the Seacoast Utility Authority, housed for decades in its low-slung, aging headquarters next to the water plant on Hood Road.

Seacoast remains, but after 40 years its headquarters are gone.

In April, the utility started in 1955 by Lake Park and Palm Beach Gardens founder John D. MacArthur completes its move into a stylish series of blue buildings accented by brown stone that nearly doubles its space, protects against hurricanes and modernizes meeting rooms, warehouse space and labs.

Does one cent make sense? Transportation planners eye sales tax to help residents get ‘from point A to point B to point C’ without a car

It’ll be up to voters to extend an existing sales tax charge in Palm Beach County for transportation but the conversation broke out in public for the first time Thursday.

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A powerful countywide planning body gave notice Thursday that it may push for a voter referendum to extend a 1-cent sales tax for transportation projects.

County voters approved the extra sales tax on top of the county’s 6-cent per $1 charge in November 2016 to pay for construction projects at schools and municipalities. It is on pace to sunset in 2025 or 2026 at the latest.

Keeping that penny in place could provide $270 million or more a year for transportation projects, enough to pay for a broad wish-list topped by adding a coastal commuter rail line. The money also could help pay for road projects hit by dwindling gas tax revenues.

County Commissioner Robert Weinroth raised the prospect Thursday during a discussion of creating bus lanes on major roads at the monthly meeting of the Palm Beach County Transportation Planning Agency board, which is made up of 21 elected officials, including five county commissioners.

From 3 lanes to 1 lane to I-95 lanes: FDOT aims to uncork PGA flyover logjam

Indiantown Road at I-95 in Jupiter also in line for makeover

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The way traffic backs up at rush hour on PGA Boulevard near the Gardens Mall has the attention of state transportation planners.

And the fix is in.

A $7 million solution could be under construction by late 2023, the same time as construction on a $10.5 million project at I-95 and Indiantown Road in Jupiter.

The intersection of bad to worse: I-95 fixes stuck in the slow lane

Work needed by 2040 but projects in a logjam with too much to do, not enough money to do it.

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When traffic engineers peered into their crystal ball in 2015 to study Interstate 95 interchanges in Palm Beach County, they saw a major need.

Not just a need to add more lanes to handle ever-growing traffic on the major north-south highway.

They saw 17 interchanges between Linton Boulevard and Northlake where congestion is expected to get so bad that traffic would spill over onto the main highway and cross traffic would be forced to wait longer and longer to let vehicles enter and exit the highway.

The $1.7 million study by consulting engineers Kimley-Horn put into motion a plan that in the next 10 years could cost $450 million at 15 of the 17 interchanges.

‘County to the left of me, Gardens to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you’ – Song of the Developers

Palm Beach County’s threat to go after developers ups ante in road impact fee dispute with Palm Beach Gardens.

A long-simmering city-county feud spilled into the business community Tuesday as Palm Beach County commissioners weighed a proposal to slap liens on Palm Beach Gardens developers for failing to pay fees they say they’ve already paid.

At issue is continued growth, business representatives said. If developers following city rules are punished by the county, they’ll go elsewhere.

“This will create a black eye for us,” said Michele Jacobs, president and chief executive of the influential business group, the Economic Council of Palm Beach County.