Jupiter Archives - OnGardens

A $35 million brain center was closed for four months. We may never know why.

If you care, call FAU Vice President of Public Affairs Peter Hull at 561-297-1352 and let him know that the public would appreciate a public university that promptly replies to public record requests.

Florida Atlantic University doesn’t want you to know how it spent $35 million of taxpayers money on a building that doesn’t work.

After the university opened the Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute in Jupiter with great fanfare in January it shut it down with no fanfare on July 30.

Little is known about the reasons behind the shutdown, the cost to reopen the building, the loss of experiments caused by the shutdown and who is going to pay for it all.

On Monday, the university said the building reopened — sort of. Research and lab animals cannot return until other thresholds are met and that could take up to eight and a half months, an internal email provided by the university said.

The state put up the money to construct the three-story, 58,000-square-foot building. A foundation headed by David J.S. Nicholson gave FAU $10 million to help run innovative programs within it.

In a state often credited with the best public records laws in the nation, FAU has gone to great lengths to keep you in the dark on why the building closed and who’s paying to fix it.

OnGardens.org made numerous attempts to get more information but the university as the sole keeper of records that could have answered basic public questions stonewalled.

Here’s how:

Wetlands in peril: County in bidding war for Pal-Mar preserves

Private ownership, dispute over value jeopardizes county’s ability to salvage untouched properties on Martin County border.

When Palm Beach County set out to buy land in the north county wetlands known as Pal-Mar, two appraisers hired by the county independently reached the same conclusion about the land’s value: $25,000 per acre.

The county didn’t want to pay that much.

“I need your help,” county Project Manager Ben Williamson wrote to both appraisers in June 2022. “Consider a downward adjustment.”

The appraisers did what the county asked.

To county officials, intent on buying as much land as possible with $4 million in federal money, telling its appraisers to consider other recent land sales seemed a justifiable adjustment, a “common practice,” as one official said.

To landowners who want top dollar for their land, the county’s rejection of its first appraisal mars its credibility. The appraisers didn’t work with new information when they lowered the values by about 40 percent, the landowners said. The only thing that changed, is that the appraisers relied on nearby sales that they initially had rejected.

The clash raises questions about just how far the county can go to get the best deal for taxpayers — even if it comes at the expense of landowners, many of them out-of-state residents whose families paid little for the land decades ago.

And it underlines the flaws inherent in the appraisal process, flaws that captured national attention when unrealistic valuations laid the groundwork for the nation’s 2008 housing bust.

At risk is the county’s ability to buy and preserve hundreds of privately owned acres in northern Palm Beach County, where wetlands have flourished as the county has fended off development since the 1970s.

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.

Power of the purse: Gardens council to give city manager more control

Final vote upcoming on proposal to raise threshold for Palm Beach Gardens City Council review of contracts to $1.18 million from $65,000.

The Palm Beach Gardens City Council is on the verge of giving its city manager far more purchasing power than other top administrators in the county.

The proposal backed in October on first reading by the council would empower City Manager Ron Ferris to approve contracts for goods and services worth $1.18 million without council review, up from $65,000.

Palm Beach County’s threshold is $200,000. In Jupiter, it’s $50,000. In Boca Raton and Boynton Beach, it’s $100,000. Delray Beach is $65,000.

‘A launch pad for science:’ Wertheim’s $100 million gift to ignite UF Scripps

‘Not one dollar … will go up north,’ UF board chair Mori Hosseini says; aim is to raise $1 billion over 10 years.

When Dr. Herbert Wertheim was a young engineer working for NASA in the 1960s, he saw miracles take flight.

Now he’s a billionaire who just gave $100 million to the University of Florida. And he sees Jupiter as the next Cape Canaveral.

“We have what I call ‘sciencenauts,’” he told dignitaries and scientists gathered Oct. 12 at the UF Scripps campus in Abacoa. “They’re going to help us solve health-care problems, not only when you’re sick, but my number one emphasis has been how do we keep people well.

“So let’s think about Jupiter as a launch pad like we think of Cape Canaveral. And this is gonna be a launch pad for science.”

Palm Beach International Raceway: Portman Industrial’s warehouse plan spins out

Owner IRG Sports & Entertainment says it isn’t considering offers to reopen the former Moroso racetrack.

Warehouse builder Portman Industrial is no longer the driving force behind plans for the now-shuttered Palm Beach International Raceway.

While the demise of the warehouse giant has race fans hoping the property could be snatched up by a racetrack operator, the owner of the nearly 60-year-old venue slammed the brakes on that option.

Rifle-toting challenger takes aim at Congressman Brian Mast

Melissa Martz’ point: the AR-15 is not to blame for mass shootings and Mast is weak on the Second Amendment.

In the past two weeks, after a gunman killed 21 people at a school in Uvalde, Texas, a Republican congressional candidate posted about two dozen signs throughout northern Palm Beach County of herself wielding an AR-15 rifle with a baby on her back.

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.