GL Homes, the developer whose land-swap proposal was rejected by Palm Beach County this week, still plans to construct nearly 4,000 homes on land it owns — but not in the agricultural region known as the Agricultural Reserve.
The company on Tuesday expressed disappointment that its proposal involving the Ag Reserve didn’t win approval, and noted how it still will move forward with alternate plans in the northern part of the Palm Beach County, in the Loxahatchee area.
“We appreciate the thousands of residents from across Palm Beach County who supported our proposal and shared their voice,” GL Homes President Misha Ezratti said in a statement Tuesday night after the land-swap proposal was rejected. “With this decision, we will move forward with our approved plans to develop approximately 4,000 homes in Loxahatchee and look forward to continuing our decades of support for the Palm Beach County community.”
The rejected plan had proposed to take land that GL Homes, one of the state’s largest developers, owns, Indian Trail Groves, and swap it for land in the county’s Agricultural Reserve.
Before Tuesday’s vote, Ezratti had said if the county did not move forward with the deal, the developer would instead build homes on its Indian Trails Grove plot. He noted that GL Homes already is approved to build almost 4,000 residential units on Indian Trails Grove, a nearly 4,900-acre plot about 20 miles west of Riviera Beach near the JW Corbett Wildlife Management Area.
GL Homes has owned land in Indian Trails Grove since 2005 when the developer received the title to the land, which represented ownership of the property.
For the next decade, the company worked on getting approvals, including the right to build 3,897 residential units, GL Homes Vice President Kevin Ratterree said during Tuesday’s meeting.
Commissioner Mack Bernard on Tuesday had questioned Ratterree and Ezratti about the company’s plans for Indian Trails Grove, including why GL Homes hadn’t yet built on the property.
“This is a matter of a private company acquiring land ahead of its needs,” Ratterree said.
Bernard noted how previous county commissioners granted GL Homes the ability to increase the number of units from 359 to 3,897 units years ago.
“When the prior board gave you the right to build an additional 3,538 units, you’ve decided that you want to hold this development of right that the commission gave you legislative grace to do, over the heads of the folks in the Ag Reserve,” he argued during the meeting.
“No, that’s not the case,” Ezratti replied. “There’s a lot of infrastructure that’s required to get out to that site. We have a lot of other projects going on, and we have identified the need for infrastructure throughout the entire county and have come up with a creative solution and proposal to address that.”
“We have a lot of property and a lot of land throughout the state, tens of thousands of acres that we haven’t started yet.”
On Thursday, Ezratti said while GL homes is approved to build 3,987 homes, the plans for the community are in the “very initial stages.”
“Our team is regrouping and will begin working on next steps when appropriate,” Ezratti said. “As always, we will work closely with Palm Beach County and the surrounding residents to create a path forward that will position Indian Trails Grove for success.”
Bernard said he’s proud the commissioners spent Tuesday debating the issue and asking tough questions to reach their conclusion to not approve the plan.
“This was a monumental decision for us,” he told the Sun Sentinel in an interview Thursday. “I just felt that the commission would rise to the level of this magnitude to address this issue.”
The county’s zoning commission unanimously voted to recommend approval on Oct. 5 for the proposal’s requested zoning changes if the land-swap moved forward, but now that the plan has been rejected, the approved changes will be withdrawn, Bernard said.
Land swap’s opponents praise decision
Several groups for years have rallied to oppose new construction in the Ag Reserve, which is more than 20,000 acres of land created with the purpose of preserving farmland and wetlands to promote and enhance agricultural activity, water resources and open space. This is done by limiting the preserve’s uses to agriculture, conservation, low-density residential development and non-residential uses.
Development is permitted on the Ag Reserve if it follows the “60/40 rule,” which states 60% of land must be preserved to allow for 40% to be used for development.
A contentious aspect of the land swap was GL Homes’ proposal to take its Indian Trails Grove land and exchange it for land in the reserve, which has never been done before.
Several groups were represented at Tuesday’s meeting, including 1000 Friends of Florida, the Palm Beach Democratic Party, the Palm Beach County Environmental Alliance, the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations, or COBWRA, and the Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group.
“There was a huge win,” said Linda Smithe, the executive committee chair of Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group in a statement. “We spend so much time wringing our hands. This is a time to sing praises.”
But this action by the Palm Beach County Commission is just one of “a thousand cuts,” Smithe told the Sun Sentinel. She intends to remain vigilant in the fight to keep the Ag Reserve protected.
Steve Wallace, the president of COBWRA who’d submitted more than 7,500 signatures to the commission on Tuesday from a petition created to garner more opposition to the land swap, likened Tuesday’s outcome to a “David vs. Goliath story.”
“We were able to, through our hard work and advocacy, join forces with a variety of different partners in the county,” Wallace said. “Everything that happened on Tuesday was fought and planned out.”
And while he took a sigh of relief after the meeting, Wallace said COBWRA is and will continue working on other projects. “We are not a NIMBY (‘not in my back yard’) organization, we are not against development, we just want smart, measured development,” he said. “We are just stewards of this area.”
