How Palm Beach Gardens is growing: City OKs $80M overhaul of 50-year-old PGA Marina

PALM BEACH GARDENS — The City Council has approved a South Carolina company’s plan to replace the 50-year-old PGA Marina with a taller, modern one that will include more space for boat storage and become the company’s “flagship” location in Florida.

Port 32 Marinas will add 57 dry slips to the marina’s capacity once it tears down the existing structure at the northwest corner of PGA Boulevard and the Intracoastal Waterway and replaces it with three blue-and-white buildings.Two of them, geared for storage, will stand 83 feet high, 37 feet taller than the building now on the property. The height of the buildings drew opposition from one homeowners group and gave some Palm Beach Gardens City Council members a moment of pause.They voted unanimously, however, to allow the project to happen, saying the overhaul meets a need for boat storage in northern Palm Beach County and noting that many resident and business groups supported it.

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“I realize the height argument will go on now and forever, but I feel like this is an area that can deal with the height,” council member Bert Premuroso said. “It’s getting rid of the crappy building there now and putting a pretty first-class marina there.”

Port 32 Marinas, which owns nine boatyards across Florida, has fine-tuned its $80-million plan since buying the property in 2021, said Ken Tuma with Urban Design Studios of West Palm Beach, the agent for the project.

“The PGA marina is reaching the end of its life,” Tuma said. “Something is going to happen there. I submit to you that this facility creates great predictability on what this land is going to be for the next 30 to 50 years.”

New PGA Marina will have more than 450 dry slips for boats

Once it’s finished, the new PGA Marina will feature a total of 471 boat slips, including 451 dry slips and 20 wet slips, Tuma said.

The two 83-foot-tall buildings will be used for boat storage, showrooms and office space. A third, smaller 5,000-square-foot building will be a ship’s store with fueling stations for boats that can dock directly at the building.

The project also fixes the current path that takes customers at the River House restaurant, which shares the property with the marina, past the working industrial site with forklifts to access the restaurant. In its place, a road network will go around the building to the west and straight to the restaurant.

“Our mission is to provide our surrounding communities with access to public waterways,” said Austin Schell, Port 32’s chief executive officer. “This project really sets the standard for what a marina can be throughout the state of Florida.”

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Not everyone at the meeting was quite as thrilled.

Residents of Marina Gardens, a gated waterfront community that sits on the Intracoastal adjacent to the marina, spoke out against the project.

Marissa Rath, the president of its homeowner’s association, called the size of the proposed buildings “excessive.”

“The warehouse-style of the buildings will make the structures appear even larger. Those buildings will tower over us,” Rath said. “This project has gotten larger and more intrusive to our community.”

Robert Donovan is worried that the new marina will destroy his Marina Gardens home’s view of the Intracoastal.

“Their appearance will look like two giant Amazon warehouses,” Donovan said. “It’s not what I envisioned for our beautiful city. … The height is just unacceptable.”

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The opposition, however, was met with more than twice as much support.

Joshua Levine, district manager for the boat retailer MarineMax, said he moved to Palm Beach Gardens from Tampa six months ago. When he saw the PGA Marina for the first time, he said, “Wow. This is it?”

Levine said he regularly receives comments from customers asking when the storage facility will get torn down.

“Maybe you haven’t seen the current facility up close, but I encourage you to see how rough it is,” Levine said. “There’s rusting metal, cracked concrete driveways, potholes, deteriorating seawalls and saltwater pools that you have to drive through to get around the property. It’s pretty much a mess.”

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The new facility will be cleaner, safer and more efficient and it will bring more people to the waterway, Levine says.

“This new facility will revitalize the waterway and improve the experience of boaters and non-boaters,” Levine said. “We can turn this old structure into a modern and true landmark that we can all be proud of.”

The attorney representing the developer, Steve Mathison, highlighted 47 letters of support from residents — including some from Marina Gardens — and businesses including Compass, Gulfstream Boat Club and SeaVee Boats.

In one letter, John Dolan, a Marina Gardens resident, wrote that the redevelopment “can only help the community … to upgrade the very run-down facility.”

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City council members made few comments before agreeing unanimously to amend the marina's planned-unit development agreement to make the overhaul possible.

Council member Carl Woods expressed concern over the one electric vehicle charging station in the plan, saying that many boat owners also own electric cars. He wanted more than one of the 178 parking spots to include charging stations.

On the spot, the developer agreed to add two more charging stations.

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Council member Marcie Tinsley said she received over 60 emails from residents both for and against the petition, but the messages that stood out to her most were those explaining the limited availability of boat storage in the area, which prompted her to research the issue.

“The amount of storage slips has decreased. I understand the need here,” Tinsley said.

Maya Washburn covers northern Palm Beach County for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida-Network. Reach her at mwashburn@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: $80M PGA Marina overhaul gets green light from Palm Beach Gardens