Decades of conflict over what to do with the once-unspoiled wetlands of Pal-Mar reached a pinnacle last month when two governmental bodies quietly signed off on a massive land deal.
The governing boards of Martin County and the South Florida Water Management District voted unanimously to pay $18.8 million and to swap hundreds of acres with Zach Gazza, whose Be A Man Buy Land turned a quiet backwater into a raucous wilderness.
The agreement, which settled a lawsuit over access to the undeveloped lands straddling the Palm Beach-Martin County border, ends Gazza’s buying spree in Martin County and means he no longer will sell individual lots as small as a quarter-acre to anyone who wants to own a slice of wild Florida.
Instead, the government will take over his lands in three sections of Pal-Mar, also known as Hungryland Trails. And Gazza will take over the government’s land in a fourth, less environmentally sensitive area known as the North Chimney.
Gazza is giving up 2 acres for every acre he gets in return. He’ll get 559 acres for 1,118.
But even that swap won’t exhaust his holdings. To do that, Martin County and the water management district agreed to pay him $18.8 million — $19,000 an acre for his remaining 990 acres.
The water management district will pay $12.8 million and Martin County will cover the rest.
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“This has always been a priority for Martin County since the 1950s,” Martin Commission Chairperson Sarah Heard said. “It’s some of the finest Everglades habitat that remains in South Florida.”
By consolidating government-owned properties and ending Gazza’s sales to individuals, the county will have a better chance to stop the damage to wetlands from off-road vehicles and curtail the hazards of indiscriminate shooting, she said.
Martin County Commissioner Ed Ciampi, in his comments Nov. 12 when the commission approved the deal, grappled with the difficulty of settling without resolving the issues raised by the presence of 350 or more remaining private landowners.
Calling the deal “a large step in the right direction,” he said the county must double down on stopping “negative behavior.”
“Just because we’re going to approve this deal today doesn’t mean that we’re not paying attention,” he said. “We will expect law enforcement to really enhance their enforcement to stop the behavior that’s 100 percent inappropriate.”
Referring to residents of Trailside, a neighborhood of homes on 20-acre lots immediately north of the most intense activities, he added, “Nobody wants to live with what they’re having to live with.”
The problems have persisted for so long that Kyla Shay, the Trailside Homeowners Association president, no longer believes enforcement will stop it.
“What it means for Trailside is nothing is going to change,” Shay said. “It sounds like Moroso (Motorsports Park) every weekend as they tear up the wetlands. It sounds like they’re driving through our houses. Pictures rattle on the walls. Do I believe one word out of any politician’s mouth? Hell no.”
Modern day land assemblage
After decades of failed negotiations, the deal ends one of South Florida’s most notable private land assemblages.
Gazza didn’t amass as much land as John D. MacArthur in founding Palm Beach Gardens or Arthur Vining Davis in establishing west Boca Raton. His assemblage had more in common with the 1980s feat of David Paladino and Henry Rolfs in piecing together 77 acres of downtown West Palm Beach to establish what today is CityPlace.
Gazza began buying properties at tax deed sales in 2015 before buying out Bob Berman, who had been the main investor in Pal-Mar for two decades. Gazza’s Be A Man Buy Land bought more than 1,600 parcels from Berman for $3 million in 2017.
Berman had proposed land swaps with Martin County before. In 2013, a $10 million deal died amid fears that land in the Chimney transferred to Berman would have been developed into a city of 4,000 people, an assertion Berman disputed.
Pal-Mar itself emerged from a Florida land development scheme gone bust. In 1968, developers proposed Rotonda, a city-in-the-round for 50,000 people. Developers began selling land nationally and internationally before obtaining county approval to build.
Martin County blocked Rotonda at every turn, winning decisive court rulings in the 1970s. By then, thousands of individuals owned tiny pockets of worthless swampland that would never be drained.
The government took out the largest landowner, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, with a series of land buys beginning in 1998. They set aside that land as the John C. and Mariana Jones Hungryland Wildlife and Environmental Area.
Martin County and the water management district owned about two-thirds of Pal-Mar’s remaining 9,700 acres. That left about 3,200 acres in private hands interspersed among the government lands.
Berman spent a dozen years organizing landowners and proposing buyouts and land swaps. Gazza, too, pitched land swaps that went nowhere.
Marketing swampland
So he started selling land, taking his ownership in a direction Berman did not. Buoyed by the COVID pandemic, half-acre and 1-acre lots flew out the door. Properties he would pay less than $2,000 to control would sell for $20,000.
He built a sophisticated marketing operation, with billboards throughout the state, online shopping and mortgages with low down payments.
Sales took off. In 2021 alone, he sold 260 lots for $2.7 million, property records reveal.
In the past, buyers speculated in Pal-Mar thinking they were paying low prices for land that could one day support a home, despite consistent opposition from Martin and Palm Beach counties.
But Gazza’s pandemic buyers had no such interests.
They wanted to play.
As COVID shut down recreational opportunities from golf courses and bowling alleys to state parks, outdoors enthusiasts were willing to take on debt for a place they could call their own.
It didn’t matter that there was just a one-lane dirt road in and out, causing hour-long traffic jams on weekends. Or that they couldn’t bring in any structures that they couldn’t haul out the same day (although many did). They packed their motorbikes and side-by-sides — all-terrain vehicles for getting around in the swamp — and became weekend warriors.
The result was a cacophony of vehicles roaring across wetlands, indiscriminate gunshots and the spread of illegal shelters, some equipped with generators or even toilets.
So many landowners flocked to Pal-Mar that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which used to supply keys to a main gate for every property owner, stopped handing them out, saying it couldn’t afford to keep making new keys.
Martin County’s efforts in 2022 to crack down on code violators took months to mount, painstakingly piecing together drone footage with the work of surveyors, sheriff’s deputies, code inspectors and environmental managers.
It resulted in citations against 10 property owners, most of whom avoided fines by removing illegal structures and waiting out the government scrutiny.
Berman, who lives in north Palm Beach County, sees similarities with what he tried to accomplish for decades but notes the key difference in Gazza’s approach.
“Zach became a legitimate threat. And for years, the single motivating factor for government action is the threat of development and Zach clearly represented that threat.”
Locked gates spawned lawsuit
In 2022, the South Florida Water Management District erected a steel gate to block vehicle access at a key point in the checkerboard of unmarked easements that criss-cross Pal-Mar. Over the next year, the district blocked two more entry points.
Gazza sued.
He argued the actions amounted to “an unconstitutional taking” of his property.
The settlement accepted by Martin County and the water management district ends the lawsuit. In it, the government agrees “not to erect any physical barriers” that interfere with landowners’ key access points.
But it’s the shift in land ownership that promises to forever alter Pal-Mar.
Gazza will own nearly 1,000 acres in the North Chimney, a 1,250-acre area north of an old line on the map called the Jupiter Grade. It stretches north toward Kanner Highway like a panhandle — or a chimney.
“The reason I started purchasing properties in Pal-Mar in the first place was to try to put together a ranch in the North Chimney,” he wrote in an email to Stet.
He’ll use the land to graze cows and for other agricultural uses, allowed under Martin County’s rules, while working to amass the remaining North Chimney land. He dismissed suggestions that he might try to piece together 20-acre parcels for development.
Despite the ease with which he knitted together thousands of parcels throughout Pal-Mar, or perhaps due to the difficulties he encountered, he views obtaining unified ownership of the North Chimney as “a multi-generational task” that he expects his two young sons to complete.
‘The deal of a lifetime’
Starting with 30 lots in 2015, Gazza spent nearly $7.7 million to buy nearly 3,900 lots in Martin County, property records show. Some lots were more than an acre, some less.
He often bought lots in tax sales, when owners lose their property for failing to pay property taxes. He picked up nearly 1,300 lots for $2,000 or less, records show.
He marketed lots for $20,000 an acre but often sold a half-acre, recording sales of $10,000 or more 381 times.
If the government values Gazza’s lots at $19,000 an acre and gives him two acres for every one in return, his 1,000 acres in the North Chimney could be valued at $38,000 an acre, Berman calculated.
That means on top of the $18.8 million direct payment, Gazza is going to own land worth nearly $40 million, making this a $60 million deal.
“For Zach, it’s the deal of a lifetime,” Berman said.
Gazza rejects that math.
“That’s not at all how I look at it. I see it as I’m selling the government land at a wholesale bulk price (less than half of what it’s worth), in order to put a family ranch together in the North Chimney for generations to come,” he wrote in an email to Stet.
“The settlement agreement is a good deal for all sides. SFWMD & MC (Martin County) get consolidated property ownership in Pal-Mar, which will make their properties easier to manage and maintain.
“The private landowners who purchased lots from me now own more desirable and valuable property, as it will be surrounded by more protected land and will have less neighbors, resulting in a more finite and desirable product (for them to sell).
“The land itself and its natural habitats will benefit from consolidated ownership on my property and on the publicly owned property … and … I get my ranch.”
What happens in Palm Beach County?
But the deal will do nothing to stop Gazza from entering into sales in Palm Beach County, where he owns 140 acres in Pal-Mar.
Palm Beach County was not a party to the lawsuit and its provisions concerning access do not affect the county’s 715-acre portion of Pal-Mar. Likewise, the settlement’s provisions calling for Gazza to stop selling land and turn over his holdings do not apply, an assessment confirmed by John Maehl, Martin County ecosystem restoration and management manager.
After years of buying, Gazza sold his first large Palm Beach County parcel in June. He packaged 11 acres at the intersection of Beeline Highway and Indiantown Road for $900,000, a whopping $79,000 per acre.
The same buyer, a company called DPMP B Line, bought a neighboring 6 acres to put together 17 acres that cost $1.3 million. The company has submitted permit requests to run cattle on the land.
Since September 2022, Palm Beach County has been on a buying spree in Pal-Mar.
It has spent $3 million in federal COVID relief money to buy 108 acres on 48 lots. The county now owns more than half of the area’s 715 acres.
But the county’s decision to reject its appraisers’ initial assessments and base offers on lower appraisals, detailed in a November 2023 Stet News story, angered Gazza. He not only refused to sell but created a bidding war by offering landowners more than the county’s $15,500 per acre appraised value.
Since the county started buying land in August 2022, Gazza has bought 71 lots for $2 million, property records show.
The county paid more for lots with access to major roads, about $40,000 per acre, but far less than its initial appraised value, which could have reached $72,000 per acre.
Still, it had great success in buying up most of those road-front parcels. Other than the DPMP lot, the county now owns all but one 8.5-acre lot along the Beeline Highway.
The lone holdout is Gazza.
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
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