Palm Beach County paves way for first apartments in Agricultural Reserve

With low inventory in part responsible for driving up rental and home prices, Palm Beach County commissioners are paving the way for the first apartments in the Agricultural Reserve.

The Reserve at Atlantic is poised to bring 480 units, 120 of them priced for workforce housing, to a nearly 39-acre site on Atlantic Avenue west of Lyons Road. The project is slated to include a daycare center for 120 children.

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“Things are not the same as they were in 1999. They’re just not. We have to get current with the times and recognize what our new reality is,” Commissioner Melissa McKinlay said, referring to when voters approved a bond to buy land in the Ag Reserve.

The project will return to commissioners for a final vote. County Mayor Dave Kerner voted against sending the proposal to the state for review, and Commissioner Mack Bernard was absent.

Despite county staff recommending that the project be denied, commissioners were moved by two factors: the initial Ag Reserve master plan anticipated multifamily housing, and more affordable housing options are needed in the county.

“If we don’t start putting things into the inventory in Palm Beach County, we’re going to have a lot of homeless children, a lot of homeless moms and dads who are making decent paychecks but it’s nowhere near what it’s going to cost to live in this county,” said McKinlay, who shared her experience being a single mother of three children.

No multifamily units at Delray Marketplace, Canyon Town Center

The Ag Reserve’s original plan envisioned two hubs for commercial and apartments. While Delray Marketplace and Canyon Town Center have approvals for multifamily housing, no units have been built.

Commissioners had previously indicated their support for allowing apartments, and therefore higher density, in the area, which has restrictions on development in favor of preserving agricultural operations and the environment.

Following a day-long workshop on the issue last week, commissioners reconvened at a public hearing Wednesday to discuss density and whether to allow industrial uses, decisions that could shape how the 8% of land remaining in the Ag Reserve is developed. The district’s representative, Commissioner Maria Sachs, led the direction given to county staff.

Sachs said she didn’t want the vision for the Ag Reserve’s future to veer too far from what previous commissioners dictated in the original master plan, as it relates to multifamily housing. As for industrial, Sachs wished for those uses to remain in a corridor near Atlantic Avenue and State Road 7.

While the specifics for now remain vague, county staff will present commissioners with a formulated plan to address those issues in February.

Yet two proposals before commissioners on Wednesday, including Reserve at Atlantic, relied on a decision that day.

Reserve at Atlantic would be across from Delray Marketplace

The apartment proposal asked for a density increase of eight units per acre, but with 60% of the property required to be in preservation, the actual density would be 20 units per acre. The developer proposed to preserve 16 acres of land on site and 20 acres off-site.

The project would be across Atlantic Avenue from Delray Marketplace, a key component to promote the area’s walkability to jobs and entertainment. All of the units, no matter market or workforce, would be the same, said Jennifer Morton, a landscape architect representing the project.

Kerner asked why commissioners shouldn’t postpone the apartment proposal until they create a plan that will address this and future projects.

“We just feel that time is of the essence to get something approved so we can get it constructed and built, if it’s the board’s pleasure,” Morton said.

The 120 workforce housing units are set to be split into low, moderate and middle income brackets. The 30 low-income units will be set aside for families with annual salaries between $47,460 and $63,280, where they could be paying between $988 and $2,038 per month. The 30 middle-income units, for families earning $94,920 to $110,740 a year, will pay between $1,977 and $3,566 a month.

Upon hearing some commissioners’ concern that the workforce housing rates would effectively be priced at market, developer Gabe Bove said he would revisit the income brackets.

“We’re passionate about delivering housing,” Bove said. “We need to move this forward and families need housing. This is a crisis.”

While the majority of comments were in favor of the proposals, some worried that commissioners weren't prioritizing the long-term impacts by voting on individual projects before finalizing their plan.

“This is turning out to be a real nightmare,” said Drew Martin of the Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group. “I thought you guys were going to establish a process so we’re going to stop this kind of spot zoning, nickel-and-dime, every project evaluated without looking at the big picture.”

Las Farms, the other project under consideration, asked commissioners to allow industrial uses on a seven-acre piece of land that had historically been used for an ornamental tree nursery along State Road 7 and north of Boynton Beach Boulevard.

Landowner Andrew Soowal wanted to sell his property because the family business was no longer economically viable.

“It’s a total loser. We want to move on,” he said. “We’re not making money and I want to provide for my family.”

Changing the use to industrial makes the property more enticing to buyers, particularly those in the landscape services industry, he said. But, since the Ag Reserve creators did not account for industrial uses in the area, county staff had no recourse but to recommend denial.

Yet a recent approval likely worked in Soowal’s favor: Commissioners in May signed off on a request for industrial use on an eight-acre property on State Road 7 south of Atlantic Avenue. This approval came with stipulations, such as limiting the use to light industrial, and kicked off the discussions on the future of the Ag Reserve.

Among the supporters was Soowal’s brother-in-law, former state House Speaker Tom Gustafson.

“I think it’s a small but important decision that you could make that would benefit not just the landowners, but the community which needs some services on that corner,” he said.

Commissioners decided to send this project to the state for review, with Kerner again dissenting.

Hannah Morse is a reporter covering Palm Beach County. She can be reached at hmorse@pbpost.com or 561-820-4833. Follow her on Twitter at @mannahhorse.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Reserve at Atlantic bringing new apartments near Delray Marketplace