Palm Beach County Agricultural Reserve farmland sells for $24 million to Arizona builder
Nearly 40 acres of farmland used for beekeeping in the Agricultural Reserve sold last month for $24 million to an Arizona-based company that specializes in building apartments and townhomes.
The property, which is at the corner of Boynton Beach Boulevard and Acme Dairy Road, was approved by the Palm Beach County Commission in August for multi-family housing under a new rule that allows for more residential construction along major roads if 25% of units are set aside for workforce housing.
Called Logan Ranch after the family who owned it for more than three decades, the project as described in August was for 314 residences with 79 dedicated to workforce housing. It included six four-story apartment buildings and 44 two-story townhomes with 23 acres preserved for green space, a walking trail, and a park.
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That was under Fort Lauderdale developer Brett Gelsomino, who thanked commissioners in August for their approval of the plan — the first of its kind under the new “essential housing” designation.
“Housing should not be an aspirational luxury,” Gelsomino said at the Aug. 24 meeting. “It should be a very basic need attainable by everyone. We recognize here in Palm Beach County that our growth has outpaced the growth of many wages, especially for middle-class America.”
It is unclear if Gelsomino, who could not be reached for comment, is still involved in the project.
A limited liability corporation called Logan Ranch Build to Rent bought the land on Dec. 21 from the Logan family and related trusts. The LLC’s managers, Darryl Berger and Branden Lombardi, are principals in the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company BB Living.
Sam Blank, also a principal with BB Living, said the company wasn't ready to comment about plans for the Logan Ranch project.
BB Living got its start at the tail end of the housing bust in 2011 by buying foreclosed single-family homes in the Phoenix area for rentals, according to its website. It soon began building single-family homes to rent, and then moved on to multi-family residences.
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All of the projects listed on its website are in Arizona.
The 39.4 acres at 11275 Acme Dairy Road is part of the 22,000-acre Ag Reserve, which has limits on construction and requires that 60% of a development be preserved as open space. To build apartments and townhomes on the property, it had to be rezoned and approved under the "essential housing" designation.
Cecily Dereuil Fazio, who was part owner of the property, said at the August meeting that she supported using the land for residential purposes. She said there was a nursery on it at one time, but that it wasn’t making enough money and they couldn’t find farmers to lease it "even for practically nothing.”
“Luckily we were able to find beekeepers and we have hundreds of hives there,” she said at the August meeting. “That allowed us to keep the agricultural exemption.”
Two western Palm Beach County resident groups, the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations (COBWRA) and the Boynton Agricultural Reserve Communities, supported the project. COBWRA, however, had wanted the four-story buildings to be reduced to three stories.
Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Developer buys Palm Beach County Ag Reserve land for $24 million
