Downtown Palm Beach Gardens Archives

Something funky brewing in Palm Beach Gardens as Subculture Coffee opens

Restaurateur Rodney Mayo opens his fifth Subculture Coffee Roasters at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens.

Step inside Palm Beach Gardens’ newest coffeehouse and it’s quickly apparent that this isn’t your typical nationally branded caffeine-fix station.

“Drink coffee not the Kool Aid” reads a large hand-scripted mural dominating one side of Subculture Coffee Roasters. Hanging from the ceiling: A 6-foot brass eyeball that opens and shuts. On the other walls, hand-drawn murals show scenes from the 1976 David Bowie film “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”

Life Time’s opening day pitch: ‘Disney of a healthy way of life’

Life Time Athletic Country Club leads one local fitness studio to fold but others don’t fear the industry giant.

The founder, chairman and CEO of Life Time Group Holdings sat in the first-floor bar at the Aug. 11 opening of his 160th club and explained how Life Time stands so far above the crowded fitness marketplace that it doesn’t have to worry about competition.

“Our goal is to create an incredibly exclusive experience but offer it inclusively to all kinds of people,” Bahram Akradi said at the Life Time Athletic Country Club in Downtown Palm Beach Gardens. “To do that you have to create a place that has a magnetism. … It has to be a completely elegant, Four Seasons-like experience every single day.”

He urges his employees to think of it like Disney.

“There were amusement parks before Disney showed up,” he said. Disney “came to Orlando but they built magic. They didn’t build an amusement park. They created extraordinary what was ordinary in other places. And Life Time is Disney of a healthy way of life.”

200 line up as REI opens in Gardens

Seattle-based outdoors retailer doesn’t fear the Florida heat, emphasizes state’s love of outdoor life.

No one camped overnight.

But when the doors opened Friday morning in Downtown Palm Beach Gardens on Florida’s sixth REI Co-op, 200 people stood in line, ready to hunt down hiking, camping and boating gear.

Lockers for 700: Life Time fitness gears up for July opening

REI Co-op also to open at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens this year even as construction tears up shopping center’s north end.

It’s still more than two months before the Life Time fitness center opens at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens but residents can still play a game of pickleball, check out the stationary bikes or even practice yoga.

The three-story center on the north end of Downtown has been under construction since 2019 but, in anticipation of its July opening, the Minnesota-based fitness giant has opened a preview center in the former west elm store and is offering free Wednesday morning classes.

Slicing the Cheesecake: Council embraces Downtown plan calling for Cheesecake Factory to go

ShopCore Properties wins city approval for massive changes at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens.

The biggest step in the transformation of Downtown Palm Beach Gardens won city council approval Thursday without a single word about the popular restaurant about to be served by a wrecking ball.

No more Cheesecake? Gardens council to vote Thursday

Shopcore Properties proposes tearing down Cheesecake Factory, adding hotel, apartment building at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens.

Plans to remake Downtown Palm Beach Gardens, including the demolition of The Cheesecake Factory restaurant to make way for a 280-unit apartment building, go before the city council Thursday.

EXCLUSIVE: Cheesecake Factory to be torn down at Downtown Gardens

Plan calls for apartment building, hotel to replace Cheesecake Factory, Texas de Brazil at Shopcore’s Downtown Palm Beach Gardens site.

The continuing evolution of Palm Beach Gardens’ fledgling downtown calls for the demolition of The Cheesecake Factory restaurant to make way for a 280-unit apartment building.

The proposed move, announced Tuesday before a city advisory board, adds residents — an integral component of any downtown, even one started in the suburban shadow of the Gardens Mall.

It’s not the only change proposed by Chicago-based Shopcore Properties, which already is deep into a redesign of the Downtown Palm Beach Gardens property it bought for $141 million in 2014.

Downtown Gardens snares outdoor giant REI

Palm Beach Gardens and Tallahassee will be sixth and seventh Florida stores for Seattle-based co-op.

Downtown Palm Beach Gardens landed a destination anchor store Tuesday in REI Co-op, an outdoors outfitter known for its sporting goods, excursions and profit-sharing.

REI would open in spring 2022, filling 25,000 square feet vacated by Urban Outfitters and TooJay’s Deli. It would be the Seattle-based co-op’s seventh Florida store and second in South Florida.

Meet your new neighbors: Council welcomes Tekno and The Blooms

New artwork to rise on Donald Ross Road outside Alton and at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens.

Two artists. Two works of public art. Two attempts at whimsy.

The public sculptures proposed for two major Gardens developments met with the approval of the city council on Thursday but ultimately it will be for residents to judge.

Heading for a prominent spot along Donald Ross Road outside the Alton Town Center is Tekno by Alexander Krivosheiw, a New York-born artist with a studio in Palm Beach.

In the mall area south of the courtyard at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens, six stainless steel dandelions dubbed The Blooms will sprout by Norwegian-born Chicago artist Dan Shaughnessy IV.