Palm Beach County Archives

Hockey in, gymnasium out

Palm Beach Gardens to vote on 40-year lease to allow a nonprofit organization to build an ice-rink complex at Plant Drive Park.

If you’re a subscriber to OnGardens, I invite you to follow StetNews.org as well. You can read the rest of this story at no charge and keep up with news of not only Palm Beach Gardens but many other parts of the county as well.

Here’s the first part of the story, below. Please click here to read the full story at StetNews.org.

Two major proposals for recreation in Palm Beach Gardens are going in opposite directions.

Moving forward: A nonprofit organization’s $40 million plan to build two ice rinks with the backing of a company associated with hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

What’s happening: The City Council will consider leasing a city park for 40 years to the Palm Beach North Athletic Foundation at its meeting Thursday.

The park is named Plant Drive Park. It is east of Military Trail and south of Burns Road behind Palm Beach Gardens High School.

The dual ice rinks would replace a girls’ softball field used by Palm Beach Gardens High School and dedicated to the memory of slain softball player Amanda Buckley. The project also would eliminate a basketball court and a skateboard park.

What they’re saying: In its memo to the council, the city called Plant Drive Park “a marginal recreational facility (that) attracts malcontents who engage in illegal activities, including vandalizing the premises.”

Rejected: Plans for a $50 million gymnasium, pickleball, mini golf and restaurant complex on 14 acres in the Gardens North County District Park.

What’s happening: The city selected developer Mammoth Fieldhouse, a subsidiary of Mammoth Sports Construction of Meriden, Kansas, in September.

Yes, but: Negotiations hit a snag in January when Mammoth revised its financial approach, Stet News learned through the city’s response to a public records request.

“The terms of the proposal are completely opposite to the city’s stated intentions conveyed to the Mammoth team almost a year ago,” city purchasing agent Km! Ra wrote on Jan. 9.

“Therefore, we will be moving forward with other options for Gardens District Park and will not be engaging into any further discussions with Mammoth.”

Read more about Palm Beach North Athletic Foundation’s efforts to build in Palm Beach Gardens here and here.

Joel has published the rest of the story at StetNews.org, a website he co-founded. Click here to continue reading.

‘It can’t be just a Costco box:’ New Tiger Woods arena draws criticism

Exclusive: Palm Beach State College trustees want more details about prefab metal building that would replace air-inflated dome.

This story is appearing simultaneously in StetNews.org and OnGardens.org.

A proposal to rebuild the Tiger Woods-led indoor golf arena at Palm Beach State College with prefabricated metal instead of an air-inflated dome met sharp resistance Tuesday from the college Board of Trustees.

Trustees leasing 10 acres off of PGA Boulevard to the star-infused TMRW Golf League refused to immediately endorse the proposal for a metal building in place of the dome destroyed in November in high winds.

The clock is ticking on TMRW Sports Group, which has committed to broadcasting on ESPN its first match at the one-of-a-kind facility in January 2025.

Gardens takes fight over county road money to Tallahassee

Palm Beach County opposes cities’ efforts to get part of fees developers pay for roads.

This story originally ran Tuesday in StetNews.org.

The fight between cities and counties over who gets the money developers pay for road work could be decided this year by the Florida Legislature.

Cities back a bill that would give them control of the money that otherwise goes to counties. Counties object.

At stake in Palm Beach County: $20 million a year in developer fees that go to roads.

‘This isn’t us against you’ — Gardens puts annexation on ballot

‘You didn’t tell us you were coming. You didn’t ask if we wanted you to come and now that we’ve told you ‘no,’ you’ve refused to leave.’

Dozens of Palm Beach Gardens neighbors picketed Wednesday outside City Hall and lined up to tell the City Council they do not want their homes to be part of the city.

They object to being part of an annexation of 1,300 acres east of Interstate 95 containing an estimated 8,300 residents.

The City Council told the opponents their messages were heard before voting against them, taking the final steps to place annexation on the March 19 ballot.

“I respect your passion, and I appreciate every one of you and what you had to say and delivered to us,” Council Member Carl Woods said. “You guys are my neighbors. This isn’t us against you, by no means. If you don’t want it, don’t vote for it.”

Despite opposition, annexation passes first test toward March referendum

One neighborhood vows to sue as Palm Beach Gardens pursues annexation of 8,300 residents on 1,300 acres east of Interstate 95.

They came to Palm Beach Gardens City Hall roughly 200 strong Thursday to speak against annexation.

Most left without hearing the City Council’s response.

They would have been disappointed.

The council countered neighbors’ statements, saying there was no reason for hostility or panic and the city had no hidden agenda.

Also, the annexation proposal shouldn’t come as a surprise, council members asserted, as there have been talks about annexation for decades.

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.

Boatyard showdown: Safe Harbor Rybovich expansion depends on change of heart

Riviera Beach City Council voted 3-2 to move boatyard expansion forward but now a 4-1 vote is required.

A city measure that empowers neighbors is setting up a Sept. 6 showdown between a multimillion-dollar superyacht repair yard and homeowners in Riviera Beach.

Expansion of the Safe Harbor Rybovich boatyard, where some of the world’s most expensive yachts go for dry dock repairs, hangs in the balance.

How Palm Beach Gardens reached so far west

City’s recent annexation flowed from a massive annexation more than 30 years ago.

With last week’s Palm Beach Gardens City Council vote finalizing the decision to annex 300 acres along Northlake Boulevard, we look back on how Palm Beach Gardens spread so far west in the first place, a story first told on the Palm Beach Gardens Historical Society Facebook page.

What is now Avenir and the Sandhill Crane Golf Club came into the city in a 5,638-acre annexation in March 1991.

The biggest piece was the 4,763-acre ranch owned by Charlie Vavrus, who at the time proposed a city for 42,000 residents. That land is now called Avenir, approved in 2016 for nearly 4,000 homes. And they’re rising rapidly.

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.

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.