April 2023 - OnGardens

Gardens 300-acre land grab riles Acreage

Backers say move harms effort to form new village: ‘They’re basically grabbing all the commercial property.’

To Palm Beach Gardens leaders, it’s a natural step, squaring off the city’s western boundary by adding 300 acres of valuable property to the tax rolls.

To the residents who want to create a city in The Acreage, it is a near-death blow.

Why warehouses? Racetrack owners press case before judge

County defends decision to deny warehouses at shuttered Palm Beach International Raceway, says owner failed to show that circumstances have changed.

It took five minutes for retired Administrative Law Judge Bram Canter to announce that mediation had failed between Palm Beach County and the landowner seeking to build warehouses at the former Moroso racetrack.

Then the real hearing began.

The City Council nobody voted for

All five Palm Beach Gardens City Council members won their current seats without facing voters.

Three Palm Beach Gardens City Council members started new terms Wednesday, rounding out a council in which all five members won their current seats without a single vote cast.

Mayor Chelsea Reed and new council members Bert Premuroso and Dana Middleton assumed the seats handed to them in November when no one filed to run against them.

A year earlier, Marcie Tinsley and Carl Woods started three-year terms under the same scenario.

Here’s why Martin County’s new growth plan could blow up its urban growth boundaries

Former commissioner argues wording changes remove restrictions, could allow racetracks or water parks on vast undeveloped lands.

Martin County’s huge swaths of rural, undeveloped land are beginning to look a lot like a playground for the rich and famous. But that could change.

For years, developers, many from Palm Beach County, viewed golf resorts as the greatest return on their Martin County land investment.

Jupiter-based basketball legend Michael Jordan opened his exclusive Grove XXIII golf course in 2019. CityPlace developer and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is proposing 36 holes on 1,200 acres a few miles to the west. A proposal from the builder of the revered Friar’s Head course on Long Island wants to replicate the exclusive, private golf-course experience on 3,900 acres in Martin County as well.

But causing the most stir is the proposal for a golf-course community from Discovery Land, a high-end vacation destination company catering to the likes of Tom Brady and George Clooney.

(This story also appears in today’s edition of Stet, a newsletter focusing on news of Palm Beach County. Sign up for a free subscription and check it out.)