Taller buildings along the West Palm Beach downtown waterfront are back on the table for the City Commission, dealing a setback to critics of the city’s plan to grow.
The Planning Board Tuesday recommended a reconsideration of increased building heights that had been dropped in response to public outcry.
West Palm Beach is updating its Downtown Master Plan and its initial draft had originally shown building heights reaching 25 stories along Flagler Drive from Datura Street to Lakeview Avenue. It would have been quite a stretch from the current five-story limit.
The change is good news for the historic Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, which planned to take advantage of the 25-story height allowance to build housing on its 1-acre waterfront site downtown.
But the specter of more concrete rising along the city’s beloved downtown waterfront angers the neighborhood groups that formed to oppose the plan. That wall of opposition was enough to get the new height limit dropped before the downtown update came before the Downtown Action Committee for its first vote on Sept. 9.
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Big setback for resident opposition
Residents who had united to fight the increased heights were aghast after Tuesday’s meeting — and some just plain confused about what had happened.
“Residents fought for months to take 25-story towers off Flagler Drive,” said Margaret Frazzini, president of the Grandview Heights Neighborhood Association and West Palm Beach Neighborhood Alliance. “Those towers must not come back through a restudy.”
Residents still oppose other aspects of the Downtown Master Plan, but this negated the one thing that hours of testimony before city officials had achieved.
“We were explicitly told the waterfront (height) incentive was off the table, and now we’re hearing discussions that raise serious questions about whether those protections will hold,” said Fatima Sanandaji, president and founder of Save West Palm Beach. “The city owes residents a clear public explanation.”
The plan spells out what kind of activity and development the city wants to encourage downtown. The last plan was approved in 2007 and a spurt of unprecedented growth in the city has city officials wanting to update its rules to guide development.
City spokesperson Kathleen Joy said that the recommendation will “be conveyed” to the City Commission, but the plan will not be altered in preparation for Monday’s meeting.
Staff “will wait for direction from the commission,” Joy wrote in an email.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Holy Trinity officials — along with church members — came before the Planning Board to press its case. Leaving the building limits at five stories in its zone would present a setback to the historic church, which has doubled in size since 2019 and is working on development options with the Brodsky Organization of New York.
“We need to get the zoning … to build the buildings we need for our next 100 years of service in downtown,” said the Rev. R-J Heijmen, the church’s rector. “Please don’t make us wait.”
Board members asked Ana Maria Aponte, director of city planning and zoning services, how the church could be assisted. She said the church property could not be singled out for special zoning. Relaxing height limits on that property would require increasing the height limits for the whole district, she explained.
At one point, as the meeting stretched past four hours, it appeared that the motion to recommend reconsideration of taller waterfront buildings was going to fail and discussion was interspersed with the votes for almost three minutes.
“We have to get rid of this motion,” said Steven Mayans, chairperson of the panel, when he thought the vote to reconsider the heights was failing. “Then we’ll entertain a new motion.“
But then positive votes started coming in.
“It’s going to pass,” Mayans said. “It’s God’s will.”
Wednesday morning, an email from Holy Trinity’s rector was circulating that said the church still had a chance for “the zoning we need in order to preserve and sustain our church for the future.”
“Praise God!!” Heijmen wrote.
