Cities grew at a faster pace over the past five years in Palm Beach County than areas outside municipal boundaries, with Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach and Westlake leading the charge.
The county’s largest city, West Palm Beach, added the most people since the 2020 U.S. Census, with 9,529 more residents, annual estimates released in October by the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research show.
The continued growth is a tribute to all the city has to offer and helps to meet the needs of a diverse population that draws a huge influx of commuters into its downtown every day, said Assistant City Administrator Armando Fana.
“It’s a little town with big-town amenities,” he told Stet News, adding, “It’s certainly better to be on the uptick of population growth than the opposite, which is decline.”
The increase brings West Palm’s estimated population to 126,944 as of April 1, 2025. That’s in contrast to the county’s next-largest city, Boca Raton, which added just 3,475 people to reach 100,897.
Still, cities grew at a faster pace over the past five years, 4.7%, than areas in unincorporated Palm Beach County, which grew at a 3.7% pace, the estimates show.
“What we have in Palm Beach County is, if you build it, people move into it. If you don’t build it, people don’t move into it,” county Zoning Director Lisa Amara said. “The county is conservative about adding units but cities, particularly the downtowns, they’re going crazy.”
Overall, the county grew to 1.55 million residents, adding nearly 64,000 residents since 2020, a rate of 4.3%.
The state grew by 8.5% to 23.3 million.
The bureau’s estimates do not rely solely on U.S. Census Bureau data and analysis of building permits but a sophisticated formula that tracks electrical hookups from the state’s 53 power companies to account for permanent residents and deduct seasonal visitors.
The state relies on the estimates for budgeting and revenue sharing.
Gardens growth doubles Delray, Boynton
While Boca is growing slower than West Palm Beach, it has grown at a 3.5% pace since 2020, adding 337 people since last year.
The next two largest cities in the county, Boynton Beach, 82,937; and Delray Beach, 69,038, have grown just 3.2% since 2020.
Port St. Lucie, which has become an affordable suburban landing spot for many Palm Beach County workers, rose by 27% to 260,194. St. Lucie County went up 20% to 394,074.
Meanwhile, Palm Beach County’s fifth biggest city, Palm Beach Gardens, has grown 9% to 64,547. Gardens added more people over the past five years, 5,365, than Boynton and Delray combined.
Only three cities grew at a faster pace than Gardens since 2020: the tiny Village of Golf, 11% to 284 people; Mangonia Park 18% to 2,530; and Westlake, a developer’s city that registered just 906 people in the 2020 U.S. Census but now has grown to 6,685, a whopping 637% growth rate.
Westlake’s growth is not unexpected. Builder Minto Homes obtained development approvals for 4,546 residential units at the 3,800-acre former Callery-Judge citrus grove along Seminole Pratt Whitney Road in The Acreage in 2014 and incorporated Westlake in 2016. Now, homes that sell in the $450,000 range are rising at a rapid pace.
County projections anticipate Westlake reaching a population of 14,656 by 2050. That would make it about the same size in 2050 as North Palm Beach or Lantana, midway in the population ranks among the county’s 39 cities.
The projections anticipate the county with 1.8 million people in 2050 and its largest city, West Palm Beach, at 156,600.
For Mangonia Park, which sits along 45th Street and Australian Avenue on West Palm Beach’s northern boundary, the rapid growth can be traced to a single townhome project, Enclave at Mangonia Park, which added 162 homes in 2022, Town Manager Ken Metcalf said.
Still to come some day for Mangonia is development of Don King’s jai-alai fronton, 52 prime acres on 45th Street at the CSX railroad tracks, that has been shuttered since 1994. Lenders foreclosed on it in April.
Gardens growth has been fueled by city code changes to allow more intense development in the city’s core near The Gardens Mall and the Florida East Coast Railway tracks and continued construction of new homes in the Alton and Avenir developments.
Some cities lost population
Despite the growth throughout most of the county, 13 cities have lost population since 2020, the estimates show. The losses didn’t amount to many people: just 268 fewer people in the 13 cities.
They were: Atlantis, Briny Breezes, Glen Ridge, Highland Beach, Hypoluxo, Lake Clarke Shores, Manalapan, North Palm Beach, Ocean Ridge, Palm Beach, Palm Beach Shores, South Palm Beach and Tequesta.
Three other cities — Cloud Lake, Gulf Stream and Jupiter Inlet Colony — each gained fewer than five residents over the five years.
And while Palm Beach Gardens continues its growth in north county, Jupiter growth slowed to just 0.3% over five years. In 2020, Jupiter had 1,865 more residents than Palm Beach Gardens. Now it has 3,301 fewer.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, said Jupiter Mayor Jim Kuretski, who has served on the Town Council for 25 years. It’s by design, he said, with residents consistently opposing growth in town surveys and supporting preservation land buys at the ballot box.
“That’s been our intention, to keep ourselves uniquely Jupiter,” he said. “We’re not going to become like those to the south. It’s fine for them. We don’t want it in Jupiter.”
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
