Northern Palm Beach County is changing from a patchwork of middle-class suburbs along Interstate 95 to a place that looks more like a city that carries big-city prices, often paid by wealthy new residents to South Florida.

Plans before governments from Tequesta to Lake Park show developers are interested in taller buildings, especially east of the highway. Many would house hundreds of market-priced apartments — renting for $2,500 per month or more — built with retail and office spaces, turning pockets of available land into mini-downtowns. 

Other high-end developments geared to new, wealthy residents are rising beyond Florida’s Turnpike, led by Avenir at the western edge of Palm Beach Gardens. It will bring more than 4,000 luxury-priced homes to the area by the time it’s complete.

The transformation comes as the region's population has swelled with high-income residents — many of them younger than the typical new Floridian — from the Northeast freed to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The trend has led to a surge in demand for luxury apartments and urban-style living in an area long dominated by single-family homes and car trips everywhere.

“The significant increase in population has been driving pricing up for housing, so the face of Palm Beach County is changing,” said Ken Tuma, who represents developers with Urban Design Studio.

Few of these new developments include any workforce housing, or residences priced so that first responders, teachers and people in similar professions can afford them. Developers and city officials say making workforce housing happen will require incentives and negotiations — and may not be easy to achieve on a big scale. 

Jupiter Mayor Jim Kuretski and his wife raised three daughters in town. He said he finds it “troubling” that many local families and people who grew up in the area can't afford to live there anymore. 

“The demand is coming from people up north, paying cash for homes,” Kuretski said. “I've never seen anything like this, and I don’t know how we are going to get out of it.”

Luxury living bring high-rise developments to Lake Park, North Palm

West Palm Beach has seen a boom in high-rise developments geared to wealthy newcomers. Lake Park and North Palm Beach, low-rise waterfront neighbors, will be the first north county communities to feel its ripple effects. 

Both have qualities that make them desirable to new residents. They hug the Intracoastal Waterway. Northlake Boulevard and I-95 link them to West Palm Beach and Palm Beach International Airport. Lake Park has its own marina, and North Palm Beach its own country club, both along U.S. 1. 

The push to build in Lake Park started with the 24-story, 330-unit Nautilus 220 condominium towers along U.S. 1, which the town approved in 2021. It is now selling million-dollar residences in a town of mid-priced single-family homes. 

Forest Development, which built Nautilus, has proposed the 16-story Residences at 10th & Park a mile west. Its 595 apartments, all of them renting at market rates, would rise at the downtown’s west edge. A similar apartment complex is proposed nearby.

A mile north of Nautilus on U.S. 1 is the old Twin City Mall site, where a seven-story tower featuring 279 market-rate apartments is nearing approval and a grander project is under review by North Palm Beach officials. 

That plan, called Village Place, would combine luxury apartments and condominiums with retail and commercial spaces. Some buildings could rise as tall as 14 stories in a village that long favored a four-story height limit. 

Those seeking a single-family home can look to westernmost Palm Beach Gardens — so far west on Northlake that it’s nearly 15 miles from City Hall. 

When it’s complete, Avenir will bring nearly 4,000 luxury homes and townhomes on about 4,800 acres, many of which will sell at prices of $3 million or more. Some in its Panther National subdivision even come with built-in Tesla chargers.

Avenir is becoming a community unto itself. It will feature a downtown-style Town Center where residents can shop. Work has begun on a Publix supermarket, and developers have secured contacts with a couple of restaurants, according to Tuma, the developer’s agent. There also will be a micro-hospital, a charter school and medical offices.

North county has been on an upscale path at least since the 1990s, when Abacoa sprung from land owned by the John D. MacArthur Foundation along Donald Ross Road and the lands near The Gardens Mall began to swell with new subdivisions and residents. 

The latest change, one that is luring an even wealthier crowd to the area, draws a range of reactions from local officials, many of whom have lived there for decades. 

Susan Bickel is mayor of North Palm Beach, where she grew up and is raising her daughter. She said new families moving there are older and wealthier than those who moved there in the past.

“I’m concerned about young families not being able to afford our community,” Bickel said. “The change makes me sad and nostalgic for the old days.”

Young families have long chosen to buy homes in Jupiter, Kuretski said. He fears this trend is changing with “skyrocketing” property values and that affordable homes the town tried to create are “no longer affordable.” 

The issue arose in March at a public meeting about a proposed apartment complex on the last undeveloped parcels in Downtown Abacoa. The developer pitched the community as “affordable” because some of its apartments would be rented at workforce prices. 

Neighbors took issue with that label, noting that the non-workforce units would carry hefty rents, including $2,675 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.

“That’s what younger people are paying when they move to Jupiter,” Donaldson Hearing, a representative of the developer, said at the meeting. 

Palm Beach Gardens residents also took note of a plan to transform Plant Drive Park in one of the city’s older neighborhoods into an ice-rink complex, removing its skate park in the process. 

Opponents of the change say parents in the area cannot afford to send their children to play hockey there, given the sport’s cost. One said the situation reflects how north county is changing. 

“This is going in an elitist direction, and I feel like the city has been heading that way,” said Tom Kern, 61, who plays basketball at the park. “It’s difficult for working-class people in this area to start with, let alone take away the few amenities that we can enjoy.” 

Others say they are taking a more hopeful view of the change.

"In the 12 years that I have been on the commission, I've been waiting for investors to notice the town and build here," Lake Park Commissioner Kimberly Glas-Castro said. "I'm excited that time has come."

Deborah Searcy, a North Palm Beach council member, said her village of older single-family homes is “far more expensive” than when her family moved there in 2009 and that any increase in the housing supply should eventually help prices. 

“More affordable housing would be wonderful. If no one's willing to do it, any (new) housing increases the overall supply. This should reduce the pressure for rising prices,” said Searcy, a Florida Atlantic University business professor. 

Bert Premuroso grew up in Palm Beach Gardens, became a banker and now serves on its city council. He says the key is to watch how northern Palm Beach County’s economy grows as the new residents move to it. 

“Hopefully, there's a lot of influx of new businesses that will develop, hire people and keep the whole economy going,” Premuroso said. “That's really the goal.”


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