A ‘doughnut hole’ in WPB shows signs of closing

West Palm Beach wants to fill the "doughnut hole" area of Rosemary Avenue and Clematis Street.
West Palm Beach wants to fill the "doughnut hole" area of Rosemary Avenue and Clematis Street.

Lightly developed land in downtown West Palm Beach may show better in-fill development potential as nearby projects gather pace.

West Palm Beach city officials have long tried to lure real estate developers to a barely built section of the downtown area, north of the CityPlace shopping and entertainment center, in the Rosemary Avenue corridor north to the Clematis Street waterfront area.

City development services director Rick Greene told the Palm Beach Post, “We affectionately call it the doughnut hole” because so much real estate development has happened around it.

But projects on the periphery of the “doughnut hole” could activate the area by injecting it with more pedestrian traffic.

Prominent among them is a Related Companies development of a convention center hotel across Okeechobee Boulevard from CityPlace.

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An affiliate of All Aboard Florida expects by mid-2017 to complete a 23-story, 275-unit apartment building on Evernia Street next to the site of a new station for All Aboard’s planned passenger train service.

Another rental development near the train station location called Broadstone Clematis will have 313 units.

West of the train station site, a development called Clematis Place will have 200 apartments and an array of retail stores.

The city’s Downtown Development Authority has been trying to activate the Rosemary Avenue-Clematis Street area in several ways that include urging retail and entertainment businesses to operate there. [Palm Beach Post] — Mike Seemuth