Residents often criticize elected officials for allowing too much development.
In tiny Lake Park just north of Riviera Beach, it’s the developers pointing fingers.
Frustrated by years of staff review for the proposed 16-story Kelsey on Park apartment building, a New York developer has had enough. Danny Goldstein, of Alder at Lake Park, sued the town last month in federal court, saying the town’s protracted review amounts to an unfair taking.
The suit accuses the town attorney, Tom Baird, of telling Goldstein and his agent, Riviera Beach City Council Member Glen Spiritis, in a March 31 meeting that “he knows people and could arrange a sale that would make all of the issues go away.”
Additionally, “the town attorney made it clear to Alder’s representatives that he was opposed to the project and would prevent its approval, stating he would ‘never let Alder build what it wants’ and would ‘just deny applications,’” the suit said.
Baird, of Jones Foster, denied the allegations “because they’re just not true,” he told Stet News.
He said he and town officials have been doing their jobs to make sure the development complies with town codes before it moves through public hearings. Many residents, concerned about traffic and the incompatibility of 16-story buildings in a low-rise area, support them.
The lawsuit, first reported in The Real Deal, contends that after the March meeting, the town unleashed a code inspector who cited Alder for 34 violations.
“The code-enforcement proceedings were not directed at achieving legitimate code compliance,” the suit written by C. Wade Bowden, of Greenberg Traurig, said. “They were (and are) being pursued in bad faith and for the ulterior, collateral purpose of coercing Alder to convey the properties, as evidenced by the town’s representation that, if Alder used the favored developer’s team, ‘all problems will go away.’”
Two downtown developers stymied
The latest proposal for Kelsey on Park, submitted June 26, calls for 426 apartments, ground-floor retail and offices and an eight-story, 638-space parking garage.
At the same time, the town of about 9,000 has been contending with a proposal from Forest Development, the builder of the Nautilus 220 waterfront condos, for a 16-story building with 595 apartments across the street from Kelsey on Park.
Forest also holds the lease to run the town marina and build a waterfront hotel and restaurant. The company owned by Peter Baytarian sued the town in December over delays it said stalled those projects.
The Forest and Alder downtown projects have been under review for years without advancing to the Town Commission.
The Forest development, called The Residences at 10th and Park, received planning board approval in 2024 but never advanced to the commission. Kelsey on Park, first proposed in 2022 as a 720-unit building, has not been brought before the planning board, a first step before the commission.
At about 2 acres, Kelsey on Park would be allowed under existing rules to build 96 units, or 48 units per acre.
But like Forest, Alder is asking for far more.
Putting all the units in one bucket
Downtown rules allow developers to exceed 48 units per acre if they can prove to the Town Commission that they meet the intent of a code that calls for maintaining a small-scale traditional downtown commercial area with buildings that relate to the pedestrian environment at a human scale.
The code is based on an average of 48 units per acre over the 32-acre downtown but allows those units to be placed in buckets, allowing one developer to claim more than the average. It’s an approach Baird criticized in a 2023 staff memo because it would allow one project to “overwhelm all of the other potential redevelopment projects.”
Forest is seeking 595 units, which amounts to 203 units per acre.
Alder proposed 426 units in its June resubmittal on 1.94 acres, or 219 units per acre.
The code allows for 1,590 additional units downtown, of which 1,340 are available. Forest and Alder’s projects, facing one another at Park Avenue and 10th Street, would account for 1,021 units.
‘Shifting, escalating and moving-target requirements’
The town established the downtown code to encourage development to attract residents to support more businesses and justify construction of a train station, although plans to bring Tri-Rail to the east coast tracks have not progressed, and Brightline already has a nearby station in West Palm Beach.
Instead of getting a chance to go before the Town Commission to approve the added density, Alder argues it is being stalled by staff’s “shifting, escalating and moving-target requirements.”
“By way of example … after Alder provided a six-foot sidewalk as requested, the town demanded a 10-foot sidewalk; after Alder redesigned the building into two towers to address the town’s massing objections, the town demanded still further massing revisions; and, late in the process, the town injected a new (sewage) lift station requirement that, by the town’s own admission, ‘may delay final approval’ of the project,’” the lawsuit said.
The lift station, however, is a downtown concern raised not by the town but the Seacoast Utility Authority.
There’s not enough lift capacity for downtown to grow, meaning the first developer to move forward must build a lift station, Seacoast said in emails to Alder representatives as early as 2023.
Baird provided general comments on the developer’s approach in an April 2023 staff memo, saying it appeared to fall short of the aim to maintain a “small-scale traditional downtown.”
“The project’s character, density and intensity is such that it is comparable to, or exceeds, the character, density and intensity of mixed use developments in the downtowns of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach,” he wrote.
“The surrounding neighborhoods are largely low density residential neighborhoods. … The project … does not deliver a compact residential/nonresidential mixed-use building that is well-integrated into surrounding neighborhoods. On the contrary, it delivers a (then-)17-story tower which is predominantly residential that would overwhelm and dwarf the existing buildings … and would not be well-integrated with the surrounding residential neighborhoods.”
Developer: Relied on town promises
The disagreements also extended to questions of compatibility, with Alder telling town planners its project “has been thoughtfully designed to complement the character of the surrounding area through compatible building massing, articulated façades and pedestrian-oriented streetscape features. … The proposed materials and design approach reinforce and enhance the established architectural identity of the district.”
The developers say they bought a dilapidated historic building at 918 Park Ave. at the town’s request to expand their project only to find the town opposed the building’s demolition, leading to more than a year of delays.
Their latest proposal, which stretches south through the vacant Barbie’s Place restaurant to Foresteria Drive, leaves the historic building out of the plan.
The town’s response has not been what the developers expected when they spent $5.2 million in 2022 and 2023 to assemble the land. In all, they say they have spent $15 million in land and planning costs with nothing to show.
They said they moved forward based on the representations of town officials, including then-Mayor Michael O’Rourke and Town Managers John D’Agostino and later Rich Reade, who didn’t start until January 2025.
“The town, acting through its officials and its adopted downtown-redevelopment policy, made representations with apparent authority that a multifamily residential development of the scale Alder proposed would be approved and could proceed,” the suit said.
‘I have no interest in suing anyone’
Goldstein, who knew Spiritis from their days on Long Island in New York, said he never would have invested in the property without the town’s assurances that it warranted more than a 100-unit apartment building.
“I have no interest in suing anyone,” he told Stet News. He just wants to build what he said he was promised.
The suit demands “full and just compensation for the properties taken.”
When news of Kelsey on Park’s latest proposal hit social media, outraged residents demanded to know how the town could have approved such a large building in such a low-key downtown even though no such approvals had been issued.
Goldstein wants to know how the town couldn’t have at least let him go forward for a vote. But without a vote, it is hard to prove that the town’s actions amounted to a taking of his property rights, Baird said.
“The rightness doctrine holds that you must have been denied at least once an application for a permit before you can sue,” he said.
But Alder filed suit based on a town planner’s recent comment “that Alder’s most recent application was rejected by the town as a ‘no go.’” That indicated the project had no hope of moving forward, the lawsuit said.
“The cumulative effect of the town’s conduct — years of shifting, escalating and moving-target requirements, coupled with the town’s refusal to approve any economically viable configuration of the project — has directly restricted and limited the use of the properties and deprived Alder of all reasonable, investment-backed use of the properties,” the suit said.
