The community of Arden in Western Palm Beach County has held the largest megaphone opposing the artificial intelligence data center project proposed next door, called Project Tango.
During the months-long process to approve Tango, community members there became increasingly alarmed about a slew of transparency issues that occurred.
They include secret meetings, messy voting procedures, an undisclosed project beneficiary, and alleged friendly texts between a commissioner and a developer's attorney.
Not to mention, the land that Arden sits on, the nearby proposed site of Project Tango, as well as one of Tango’s developers, have a complicated history dating back two decades.
That history involves development deals, public trust concerns, and county commissioners who pleaded guilty to fraud in the 2000s.
There are no fraud accusations in today’s AI data center project, which was voted down in July after a contentious process.
The no-vote followed a groundswell of complaints related to water, electricity costs, and noise impacts in Western Palm Beach County.
The saga is not over. Because of prior approvals, a data center could still end up on the site, though much smaller than the roughly 3.6 million square feet sought by developers this year.
Since the application was denied “without prejudice,” developers for Tango can bring back their application.
PBA Holdings, Inc. — the lead developer for Project Tango — is locked in dueling lawsuits with WPB Logistics, LLC, another landowner. They both seek to turn the land into data centers in order to meet the real, projected, and profitable demand for AI capacity.
PBA Holdings estimated the total value of Project Tango was $34.5 billion, which is larger than any other county property.
Meanwhile, county commissioners cemented a one-year moratorium on data center construction — creating time for the county to update its zoning regulations.
Ernie Cox, project manager for PBA Holdings, wrote in a statement that the project has adhered to all transparency requirements.
“We consider this site to be a great opportunity to provide essential infrastructure for our region and our state,” Cox wrote. “We'll continue to work with the county and other key stakeholders to demonstrate its value, address concerns and pursue a path forward.”
Public outrage, postponed vote
The roughly seven-month bid to turn rock mining land into a hyperscale data center resulted in numerous controversies, ranging from poor optics to transparency gaps, according to records, interviews and meetings.
Public outrage first emerged after the commission placed Tango on the consent agenda last December, following minimal public review.
The consent agenda is reserved for items to vote on quickly that are considered settled and non-controversial.
“The simplest way for them to sneak it past us,” according to Ben Brown, a 7-year Arden resident and project opponent.
Eagle-eyed residents caught wind and raised a stink. The developers requested the vote be postponed.
Two months later, District 6 Commissioner Sara Baxter, whose district includes Tango’s proposed site, made comments that required her to exclude herself from voting on the project altogether.
“I want everyone to absolutely understand that I am not in support of Project Tango," Baxter said at a Tango town hall in February.
Those comments were considered prejudicial, according to the county attorney, who recommended Baxter skip the commission vote as a result. She did.
In April, Baxter, who was facing questions and an increasingly difficult re-election, returned a $10,000 campaign donation given to her campaign committee by Tango developer PBA Holdings.
County records show her campaign also received a $1,000 donation from PBA Holdings Inc., president Enrique Tomeu, which she kept. Tomeu co-owns the land where Tango was proposed.
Baxter did not respond to a request for comment about the recusal or political donations.
Another commissioner, Maria Marino, was criticized for allegedly sending friendly text messages to Tango’s attorney, Brian Seymour, during the July 15 county commission meeting, when county constituents were speaking.
Nik Salanitro, a video blogger from Port Charlotte, said he took photos of Seymour sending memes and chatting with Marino, while she was up on the dais. He said as much during his public comments.
“There’s a lot of corruption. If you guys vote yes to this, I will spend six months making sure you guys don’t get reelected,” he said. “Your people that voted you in don’t want this data center.”
WLRN reviewed copies of the texts and sent screenshots to Marino’s office to verify if they belonged to her. The commissioner did not respond to WLRN’s requests.
At that same hearing, county commissioners accused the dueling data center landowner, WPB Logistics, of holding secret meetings with them, without telling them the company was suing the county.
In mid-July, county commissioners voted 5-1 against Project Tango. Every commissioner voted against the project, except for Marino. Baxter didn’t vote at all.
Yet more than a month later, a glaring transparency issue remains: the public still doesn’t know which tech giant would be the end user for the AI capabilities powered by Project Tango.
Commissioner Maria Sachs, who voted against Tango, criticized it at a recent hearing.
"Who owns these hyperscale data centers? We did not know that for Project Tango," she said. "I think it’s important. I think it’s important who owns the damn thing."
Influence campaigns
Political donations, public relations and lobbying efforts flooded the zone in the last 18 months, during public debates over the data center.
Since January 2025, Tomeu and another company that lists him as president, Palm Beach Aggregates, LLC, have given $300,000 to political campaigns and committees across Florida. The LLC was started in 2009 by the company that became PBA Holdings, filings show.
Records show the largest recent donations include $125,000 to Byron Donalds’ campaign for governor and $100,000 to a Republican Senate campaign committee.
Other recipients include local campaigns for Baxter, Palm Beach County Commissioner Marci Woodward, and incoming commissioner Erica Whitfield.
County records show that at least four lobbyists representing Tomeu met with county commissioners 22 times to advocate for the project in the last two years.
Up in Tallahassee this year, Palm Beach Aggregates, LLC, paid up to $40,000 to three lobbying firms, state records show.
In the spring, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law protecting consumers from energy costs from hyperscale data centers. That version was watered down from an earlier bill, which had included more transparency requirements for data center projects.
PBA Holdings also successfully lobbied Tallahassee legislators to extend a data center tax break back in 2021, according to independent Florida investigative journalist Jason Garcia.
The “Central Park Commerce Center Project Tango” Facebook page, run by Tango developers, published several slick videos for Facebook and Instagram Reels before the vote, which downplayed concerns about noise from the data center to a nearby school. The videos have tens of thousands of views.
“Central Park Commerce Center” is what PBA Holdings and WPB Logistics called the land pitched to become Project Tango.
The content creator in the video quoted reports commissioned by Project Tango developers. “Project Tango will actually be quieter than what’s already there,” he said.
‘Volatile mix’ in Palm Beach County
Decades before “artificial intelligence” or “data center” entered Florida's lexicon of issues, real estate was king — especially in Palm Beach County.
Between 1990 and 2000, the county grew by a whopping 30%, from roughly 863,000 people to 1.1 million, according to U.S. Census records. Over the following decade, nearly 200,000 more people settled in.
The influx of people and money combined explosively in Palm Beach County with unscrupulous politicians and few ethics laws, according to former State Attorney Michael McAuliffe.
He empaneled a grand jury and advocated for ethics reforms in the 2010s following high-profile corruption scandals involving public officials.
“ When you put a lot of developer money, economic engine, governance issues together, and you throw them in a pot, it can be a volatile mix,” McAuliffe told WLRN.
Complicated history
The real estate boom in Palm Beach County pushed development to the edges of county lines near agriculture and the Everglades.
One real estate deal was covered in the Palm Beach Post in 2004, profiling a rock mining entrepreneur named Enrique Tomeu and his company, called Palm Beach Aggregates, Inc. — the company that later became PBA Holdings, Inc., records show.
“Tomeu comes from a long line of Enrique Tomeus — a name shared by his father, his grandfather, and assorted cousins. They originated in (Camagüey), the central Cuban province of savannas and cattle where the Tomeus owned a 10,000-acre ranch,” the Post reported.
When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and took control of their ranch, his family went into exile, fleeing to Florida, it said. Tomeu’s grandfather and uncle took part in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.
When it became clear they wouldn’t return to Cuba, the family settled in South Florida and flourished in Palm Beach County.
Tomeu worked for his father’s car dealership in Belle Glade before buying his first rock mine in his 20s, the Post reported.
Tomeu ended up meeting Sam Klein, a former board member and major shareholder of Bally Manufacturing — which owned casinos, hotels and amusement parks in Las Vegas and worldwide.
By the 1990s, Klein and his son went into business in Palm Beach County, where they bought a mine and surrounding farmlands on Southern Boulevard, the Post reported. Tomeu ended up joining the venture.
Klein has since passed away, and his son, Michael, is listed as one of the co-owners of PBA Holdings, behind Project Tango. Michael Klein is reportedly a fervent environmentalist.
In the early 2000s, the predecessor company Palm Beach Aggregates, Inc., turned nearby empty farmland and its own spent mining pits into valuable business ventures: the farmland into a community of homes and the empty rock-mining pits into water storage for the government.
Both deals, however, would spell trouble for the county commissioners secretly involved in them.
Masilotti
According to prosecutors, then-Commissioner Tony Masilotti used his position to achieve his own financial windfall in four development deals — one of which was with Palm Beach Aggregates, Inc.
“In late 2003, Masilotti devised a scheme to secretly purchase sixty (60) acres of land within a larger 1,200-acre tract owned by Palm Beach Aggregates and then use his official position to substantially increase its value,” prosecutors wrote in a filing.
They said that Tomeu had been — at the time — trying to get the village of Wellington to annex the tract of land, in hopes of receiving a land use change in order to build 2,000 homes.
Masilotti got his brother, Paul, to purchase a $100,000 option on the land on his behalf, court records state.
Tomeu said he didn’t know the commissioner was actually behind the purchase or subsequent dealings. Neither Tomeu nor the company were implicated in the criminal case.
Masilotti then advocated for the annexation in Wellington, and, when that failed due to public opposition to development, he went to his own commission.
There, county commissioners decided to award Tomeu a land use change, which allowed him to develop the land if it stayed in the unincorporated county. Masilotti voted in favor of the measure without disclosing his secret stake, court records show.
Then, Aggregates purchased 300 acres in Brevard County, at $7.7 million. The land had “been identified by defendant Masilotti and his brother, who were planning a land swap to conceal the scheme,” prosecutors said.
Masilotti pleaded guilty and served roughly three years in federal prison.
Newell
Over a year after Masilotti’s indictment, another Palm Beach County commissioner would be indicted for his undisclosed role in a business deal involving Palm Beach Aggregates, Inc.
An engineer, Dan Shalloway, ran a firm that was co-owned by Commissioner Warren Newell.
Shalloway convinced his old employer, the South Florida Water Management District, to consider a property in western Palm Beach County once used for shell-rock mining as a place for water storage.
That land belonged to Palm Beach Aggregates, whose empty mining pits on approximately 1,250 acres were considered for reservoirs by SFWMD.
Unbeknownst to SFWMD was that Shalloway’s firm had a secret “success fee” contract with Aggregates. The engineering firm would receive a fee if it made a deal with a government agency to sell Aggregates’ land.
Newell voted to spend money to study the plan, the indictment states.
In 2003, SFWMD paid Aggregates $190 million for long-term water storage on the land, court documents state.
As a result, Aggregates paid Shalloway’s firm the success fee, roughly $366,000 of which a portion went to the firm’s other partners, including Newell.
Prosecutors said Newell and Shalloway later concealed the commissioner’s share of success fee payments by disguising them as both bonus payments from the firm and personal loans from Shalloway.
Palm Beach Aggregates said it had no clue Newell was involved in the deal. The company was not accused of wrongdoing. Shalloway was never charged and died in a plane crash in 2016.
Newell was indicted in October 2007. He pleaded guilty and served time in federal prison.
After the indictment, Palm Beach Aggregates paid $2.4 million — the amount the two men allegedly profited — back to the water district, according to the Post. They did so in the "spirit of partnership,” Tomeu reportedly said.
“It is apparent now that much needs to be done to repair public confidence in our collective efforts,” he said.
In summer 2009, Palm Beach Aggregates changed its name to PBA Holdings, Inc., according to state business filings.
Need for transparency
Arden residents are now considering the next steps in their fight against Project Tango.
Ironically, the very land at play in the Masilotti deal ended up becoming Arden — the community largely against Project Tango and PBA Holdings.
Though there are no allegations of wrongdoing, to Ben Brown — the advocate — there’s still not enough government transparency.
He said Palm Beach County elected officials need to give constituents all the requisite information when considering a proposal the size of Project Tango.
That way it doesn’t seem like they have a dog in the fight.
“Make transparency transparent,” he said. Their simple ask: “ Give us the real information.”
