Palm Beach County Archives

No speedway here: Residents win fight to block eight-laning of Northlake

Palm Beach County drops road widening options for western section of Northlake Boulevard despite anticipated rise in traffic from large new communities.

CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, the original story published Feb. 3, 2023, incorrectly attributed to Palm Beach Gardens City Attorney Max Lohman comments from the audience at the Jan. 13, 2023, Planning Commission meeting. The comments were made by Avenir attorney Brian Seymour, not Mr. Lohman. The story has been updated as of Feb. 5, 2023, to remove the incorrect information.

Palm Beach County planners and engineers, girding for construction of thousands of homes, are certain that sometime in the next 10 years traffic will dictate the eight-laning of parts of Northlake Boulevard.

Residents of the western gated communities in Palm Beach Gardens and West Palm Beach are equally certain an eight-lane road outside their neighborhoods would be a disaster, eliminating slow-down lanes, decorative entryways and lush landscaping to make way for a dangerous speedway.

On Wednesday, the residents won.

Denied 4-2: County Commission sides with racing fans over warehouses

After a motion to approve warehouse zoning at the former Palm Beach International Raceway died for lack of a second, Palm Beach County commissioners tossed aside concerns over being sued and voted to deny the plan.

History repeats itself.

Faced with a room full of avid racing fans fighting for their way of life, a county board once again rejected plans for warehouses on the site of the former Palm Beach International Raceway.

Palm Beach County commissioners voted 4-2 Thursday to deny the application from property owner IRG Sports & Entertainment to convert the shuttered racetrack on the Beeline Highway west of Jupiter into a 2.2-million-square-foot warehouse complex.

Appellate ruling favors county over Gardens on road-building

At stake: Who controls money developers pay for road improvements, Palm Beach Gardens or Palm Beach County?

An appellate court has rejected Palm Beach Gardens’ arguments in its fight with Palm Beach County over how to pay for growth from new development.

The ruling forces the city to resume collecting impact fees from developers for the county, which decides how to spend the money.

It imperils the city’s new mobility fee program, which was designed to collect money from developers for projects determined by the city.

Tax relief for some: Gardens council trims tax rate

Palm Beach Gardens residents with homestead protection will pay less, those without will pay more.

For city property owners with a homestead exemption, this year’s Palm Beach Gardens tax rate amounts to a tax cut.

For the rest, about 40 percent of city taxpayers, the rate set in September by the City Council means paying more in taxes to the city.

$350 million at stake: County to consider borrowing for affordable housing, the environment

Are residents willing to put up $200 million to correct the housing imbalance? Would they support $150 million for water resources? County commissioners to discuss Tuesday.

Palm Beach County has never been reluctant to spend large sums of taxpayer money to tackle huge issues.

Voters approved $100 million bonds twice in the 1990s, once to buy environmentally sensitive land and a second time to buy south county farmland.

Without voter approval, county commissioners shelled out $269 million in 2006 to land The Scripps Research Institute and $87 million more to bring Germany’s Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience to Jupiter.

But borrowing $350 million in one fell swoop? That’s what commissioners will contemplate at a 9:30 a.m. March 29 workshop.

North county growth: UF now holds key to 70 acres at Alton

Palm Beach County donated the land to Scripps Florida in 2006 to cement deal to bring Scripps to Abacoa.

Second of two parts

It started as a deal-sweetener to ensure that Scripps Florida would be built at Abacoa.

Now the vacant 70 acres at Alton in Palm Beach Gardens could become a key piece of a deal worth hundreds of millions to convert Scripps Florida into a branch of the University of Florida.

Who’s in charge? Resignation leaves transportation agency adrift

Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency Executive Director Nick Uhren resigns but won’t say why; board considers hiring former deputy Valerie Neilson.

As the federal government unleashes billions for transportation, the head of the countywide agency charged with prioritizing how all that money is spent has resigned.

Nick Uhren’s decision to quit the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency after eight years left the agency’s 21-member board scrambling Thursday to find a replacement for the $200,000-a-year job.

Growth management revolt? Judge to hear Gardens-county clash

Palm Beach Gardens will argue that Palm Beach County’s decades-old system of collecting impact fees from developers must be thrown out.

A fight over control of millions of dollars in developer money has morphed into a rebellion that could blow up the system that has helped pay for growth in Palm Beach County since the 1980s.

At its center is Palm Beach Gardens, which alone among the county’s 39 cities is fighting in court for the right to collect a state-sanctioned “mobility fee” from developers and spend it on projects of the city’s choice.

EXCLUSIVE: Catalfumo takes over Panama Hattie’s site

Developer seeks permission to add 2 acres, 26 condos to now-vacant site along the Intracoastal Waterway at PGA Boulevard.

The long-stalled plan for condos on the former Panama Hattie’s restaurant site has new life under an expansion proposed by developer Dan Catalfumo.

Census 2020: Watch the Gardens grow

Led by Palm Beach Gardens, north county cities grew 15% over 10 years; Hispanic population rises throughout Palm Beach County.

Palm Beach Gardens grew at a 22 percent clip over the past 10 years, the second-fastest rate of any city in Palm Beach County, census 2020 figures show.

Jupiter remains the most populous city in north county, at 61,047, but Palm Beach Gardens gained on it, drawing to within 2,000 at 59,182.

Over the past 20 years, the Gardens’ growth rate of 68.8 percent is third in the county trailing just Palm Springs and Royal Palm Beach, census records show. Jupiter grew seventh-fastest over that period at 55 percent.