A four-tower, 508-condominium development proposed in Riviera Beach is dramatic evidence the coastal real estate boom that city leaders long for may finally have arrived on Broadway.
The $480 million project planned for a vacant block west of Broadway between 11th and 12th streets won city Planning and Zoning Board approval last week.
Just two years ago, a planning commissioner lamented that the 4 acres were destined to become a boat yard.
READ MORE: Riviera Beach marina expansion underway as city seeks development partners
“It’s like you’re shoving this down our throat,” Planning Commissioner Margaret Shepherd said in August 2023, when Brian Terry of Insite Studio in Palm Beach Gardens presented plans for a two-story boat dealership and repair shop. “We got another boat yard in our neighborhood. I don’t want to see any more boats.”
Still, the new headquarters of Mariner Marine, managed by businessman John Staluppi got the board’s reluctant blessing.
But in March, a firm controlled by developer Jeffrey Sobel bought the block for $12 million, property records show. And on Thursday, Mariner Marine project designer Terry returned to the planning board with the game-changing condo proposal.
Why did Staluppi sell?
“People aren’t buying boats right now,” Sobel’s land use attorney, Wayne Richards, told the board. “So we caught a break. And the person, the boat man, great person, decided to sell.”
The shift to condos is part of a transformation of a long-derelict edge of the city just north of the industrial uses at the Port of Palm Beach into a massive residential hub.
It is across the street from two projects promising 567 apartments on city-owned property developed by the Miami-based Related Group and partners.
Construction could begin in the fall for Residences at Marina Village, an eight-story, 149-apartment workforce housing project south of East 12th Street.
Related Group’s affordable housing arm, Related Urban, led by Alberto Milo, and Tezral Partners, led by former Riviera Beach CRA Director Tony Brown and general contractor Ezra Saffold, are the developers.
Next door, at 1300 Broadway, the 20-story Gallery at Marina Village, where one-third of the 418 apartments would be reserved for workforce housing, is under staff review.
Related Group, Tezral Partners and BH Group are leading the venture.
The city also has been working to draw more restaurants, stores and a hotel to the Marina Village, although plans pursued two years ago to bring a Margaritaville hotel fizzled out.
One block west of the Sobel condo project, on Avenue E, the Riviera Beach CRA and the Riviera Beach Community Development Corp. are planning townhomes for people with a mix of incomes on another empty lot. REG Architects of West Palm Beach is the designer of the Villa L’Onz townhouse project.
“I think that what’s being proposed now is certainly a much better fit,” Terry said last week about the condo project.
The area has been untouched by development since the housing craze of the early 2000s, when Staluppi and other developers bought vacant land along Broadway anticipating a massive city project to reroute Broadway to the west, carving out space for a public lagoon on the Intracoastal Waterway. Those plans died when the state passed a law blocking city efforts to seize property by eminent domain for private economic development.
Instead of a 5-foot fence facing Broadway to screen a boat dealership, the condominium building would have 10,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space on the thoroughfare.
Two towers on Broadway would rise 13 stories. Two towers on the west side of the property would be 20 stories, according to plans submitted by architect GarciaStromberg of West Palm Beach.
A strip of land, originally planned to be a buffer between the boat dealership and the townhome project, would be a 14,000-square-foot park-like backyard for the condos and open to the neighborhood.
That puts the condo building 40 feet east of Avenue E.
“The city is trying to encourage, along with these projects, for there to be open space for residents to use,” city planner Curt Thompson told Stet News.
And still, even though the project isn’t a boatyard, it raises a new set of concerns, the ones that come with high-density development: traffic, safety and the threat of pushing out the people who live nearby.
Sobel’s representatives stressed that the building’s surroundings would be walkable. But Vice Chair Frank Fernandez was disappointed that residents who want to cross Broadway to visit the Marina Village would have to make their way to the nearest traffic signal, at 13th Street.
“Walking two blocks would be kind of difficult for some people,” Fernandez said. “Nobody’s going to do that.” He suggested the developers look into a walkway over Broadway.
Riviera Beach resident Scott Lewis urged commissioners to consider the traffic that could clog Broadway from the hundreds of new homes coming to the Marina Village. He urged them to abandon 12th Street, on the north side of the project, and force traffic onto 13th Street where the signal could manage the flow.
Commissioner Shepherd, who lamented the boatyard plan, wanted to be sure nearby residents and property owners were aware of the big changes coming to their neighborhood.
City planner Thompson said signs were posted and letters were mailed to everyone within 300 feet of the project. The city received no emails or calls in favor of or opposed to the project, he said.
The City Council, serving as the CRA board, has favorably reviewed the project. Now that the planning board has unanimously approved it, Thompson said city staff will work out details with Sobel before it goes to the City Council for review.
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
