Days before the Project Tango hyperscale AI data center goes before county commissioners, a competing landowner asked a Palm Beach County Circuit Court judge to halt the hearing.
The amended complaint and a motion seeking an emergency injunction, filed Friday by WPB Logistics Owner, the owner of 60 acres in the 202-acre project area, met with a decisive thud on Monday. Judge Darren Shull denied the emergency motion, refusing to set a hearing before Wednesday’s zoning meeting.
WPB Logistics sued PBA Holdings, which owns the bulk of the property on Southern Boulevard at 20-Mile Bend, on June 5, as Stet News reported. While WPB sought an injunction to block the meeting then, the suit drew a motion to dismiss from PBA but no emergency court hearings.
With the 52-page amended complaint, WPB Logistics is upping the ante, charging PBA with holding “secret” meetings and phone conversations with county commissioners to win approval at the expense of WPB. The development company, backed by the TPA Group of Atlanta, added the Palm Beach County Commission as a defendant.
In those meetings, PBA Holdings principal Enrique Tomeu proposed “restrictive conditions being applied to the property” that WPB says would limit its development rights, WPB Logistics attorneys Amy Taylor Petrick and Tara Duhy wrote.
Among those limits is a newly proposed county staff condition that no data center be built within 850 feet of the site’s eastern property line, a move designed to create a 1,750-foot buffer between data center buildings and the neighboring Arden community and Saddle View Elementary School.
But such a condition would preclude WPB Logistics from building a data center on land it is under contract to buy from PBA, the suit says. As WPB did not give its consent to such a condition but would be required to follow it, WPB seeks a court order to block the County Commission meeting.
Such a buffer could even block the construction of warehouses along the property’s eastern edge, the lawyers argue, because modern distribution facilities include data center components and artificial intelligence-based technology.
“Tomeu arranged his meetings and telephone conversations with county commissioners and staff without notifying WPB in advance, or by notifying WPB just before the meetings such that WPB could not possibly attend and advocate against the application of conditions,” Petrick, a former assistant county attorney, and Duhy wrote.
It is common for applicants to meet personally with county commissioners before meetings to state their case and answer questions. Commissioners are required to disclose such meetings at the public hearing.
Request would nearly double site’s development potential
In private meetings, WPB Logistics urged county staff to block the July 2 Zoning Commission consideration of the project for the same reason: WPB had not given PBA Holdings consent to make changes to the site’s master plan, which governs what can be built there, and had no say in accepting conditions that could limit the development on its land.
Additionally, WPB has a contract to buy from PBA an additional 75 acres, called the Phase 2 property. The contract requires PBA to pursue zoning approvals to allow additional development on those 75 acres.
To add more development, PBA is pursuing the zoning change, which would nearly double the size of the 2 million-square-foot project by allowing an additional 1.5 million square feet of development.
Duhy, given 10 minutes to speak during the July 2 zoning hearing, asked the board to stop the meeting because her client had not consented to PBA Holdings’ proposed changes to the site’s master plan and to conditions suggested by the county for approval.
But county code does not require the consent of other property owners or contract buyers within a master plan site, Assistant County Attorney Darren Leiser responded. He told the board Duhy’s belief that consent is required is based on a general provision of who may apply for zoning changes.
Armed with Leiser’s advice, the zoning board held its hearing and recommended denial of PBA’s request to nearly double the site’s development rights.
County commissioners are scheduled to hear the same request at 9:30 am Wednesday in commission chambers in downtown West Palm Beach.
The room holds only about 150 people. Anticipating crowds, county staff is offering full participation via video links to watch from Vista Center west of Florida’s Turnpike off of Okeechobee Boulevard, about 6 miles west of downtown.
Facing overwhelming community opposition, PBA Holdings has launched a social media publicity blitz to argue that its data center proposal would not harm its neighbors.
‘Self-interested prioritization and pursuit of entitlements’
While PBA pursues the additional development needed to fulfill its contract with WPB, the Atlanta developer argues that PBA’s actions actually are designed to thwart WPB’s development ambitions.
“Given the intense opposition to Project Tango from the public and county officials, any additional square footage allocations … may either be denied or subjected to stringent development restrictions,” the suit says.
“Said slightly differently, WPB’s Phase 2 development (the option to buy 75 acres) will either be prevented entirely or will likely be subjected to the stringent development restrictions as a consequence of PBAH’s self-interested prioritization and pursuit of entitlements for its portions of the property at WPB’s expense.”
WPB ripped PBA’s willingness to allow an 850-foot setback that would mostly affect the land WPB holds a contract to buy. It pointed to a hidden goal, to force WPB to give up its claim to the land so that PBA could retain control.
PBA Holdings “objective with this proposal was two-fold: (i) to garner support from the county for PBAH’s planned data center uses … in exchange for encumbering the Phase 2 property with these restrictive conditions,” the lawsuit says, “and (ii) to impair the value and marketability of the Phase 2 property as a means to force WPB to terminate its contractual rights to purchase the Phase 2 property.”
PBA’s motion to dismiss, filed June 29 by Tampa attorney Ethan Loeb, does not address these allegations or the issue of consent but rather argues on technical grounds that WPB’s initial complaint must be dismissed. It has not been heard yet.
What is WPB Logistics Owner?
Since all baseball fans know you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, Stet offers this who’s who refresher, with minor changes since it was first published June 15:
WPB Logistics Owner is a Florida corporation formed in January 2025 with four officers, all employees of TPA Group of Atlanta, including TPA President J. Bradford Smith and TPA Director Matt Prince. It took over the interests of FL Development Acquisition LLC, which formed in 2021 and signed the contract to buy in phases most of the 202-acre site now proposed for Project Tango.
WPB Logistics paid PBA $36 million for 60 acres in February 2023 and held an option to buy an additional 75 acres for $34.4 million. It initially sought to build warehouses. It also holds the right to buy an additional 34 acres, a so-called right of first refusal, if PBA tried to sell it to another warehouse developer.
It also spent millions to build the recently completed entryway into the project area along Southern Boulevard on about 15 acres. It has two of the three seats on the Central Park Commerce Center Master Association, which owns the entryway land.
In all, it could control about 184 acres of the 202-acre site.
WPB Logistics Owner and the Central Park Commerce Center Master Association filed the lawsuit June 5 against PBA Holdings.
What is PBA Holdings?
PBA Holdings is a successor organization to GKK Corp., which paid $13 million for 3,000 acres north of Southern Boulevard at 20-Mile Bend in 1993. The company made millions mining rock as Palm Beach Aggregates and sold off a set of the nearly leakproof mining pits for more than $200 million to the South Florida Water Management District in 2001.
In 2002, Florida Light & Power received zoning approval to build the West County Energy Center on 200 acres at the site. Property records show FPL paid Palm Beach Aggregates at least $39.5 million for portions of the property.
In 2014, PBA Holdings sold off an eastern section for $77 million to make way for the 2,300-home Arden community. Saddle View Elementary School opened there in August 2025.
PBA’s owners include Michael Klein, son of the late GKK Founder Sam Klein; Enrique Tomeu, who first invested in the rock mining company in 1997; executives with the Phillips Cos., a construction conglomerate out of Knoxville, Tenn.; and an attorney who represents the principals of Ogden CAP Properties LLC and the Seymour Milstein Family.
Their project manager, Ernie Cox, has worked for PBA since about 2009, including its efforts to convert rock pits into water storage, the Arden land sale and the zoning of the industrial site that would become Project Tango, starting in 2016.
What is Project Tango?
Project Tango is the code name given to a project to draw a large, unidentified tech company, such as Google, Oracle, Microsoft or Apple, to a data center at PBA Holdings’ property at 20-Mile Bend. It first came to public attention in December when the Palm Beach County Zoning Board voted in favor of a request to allow 1.8 million square feet of data center use and 3.6 million square feet overall at the site (now reduced to 3.5 million square feet).
What is TPA Group?
WPB Logistics Owner’s board is made up entirely of executives from Atlanta-based builder TPA Group. It’s a privately owned development company led by J. Bradford Smith, that builds housing, office parks and warehouses, and recently began moving into data centers.
TPA Group recently announced it is teaming with Houston Rockets basketball star Kevin Durant to redevelop a 515-acre former Six Flags America site in Maryland’s Prince George’s County.
In papers filed last year with the county, it lists Hartford Life and Accident Insurance and related companies as an 80% owner of its interests in the property and TPA-related companies as owners of 20%.
Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication Monday with additional information.
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
