The room burst into applause.
That’s not typical for development review meetings. But Maggie Zeidman, then-president of Palm Beach’s Town Council, had just suggested a new park in the heart of the island, one block away from the beach.
“Whoever owns it gets to make it a park,” she said in the January meeting. “So I just leave it out there for you, if you can make that happen, if a group of you can make that happen.”
The call to action was clear: Zeidman wanted her neighbors to cobble together the money for the park. It could have been ripped from an earnest screenplay, this idea of neighbors banding together to save the town from a developer looking to pave paradise. They would need at most, Zeidman estimated, half a billion dollars.
“It’s the last, last, last piece of property in a very fabulous location that could become green and could just be a park,” she said. “But the way I calculate it, it might cost about $400 million to buy a big section of it.”
In most small towns, that’s an unimaginable number. But this is Palm Beach.
“I’m serious when I say it, I’m not fooling around,” she said. “It’s not necessarily magical thinking either, because things do happen like that. It’s a very wealthy town.”
The land in question is a 5.8-acre parcel at the central intersection of South County Road and Royal Palm Way owned by Wells Fargo. There are some landmarked buildings on the property, but most of it is a typically empty parking lot.
After more than a century of infill, a development site in Palm Beach is a rarity these days. Given its size and prime location, the Wells Fargo lot is the white whale for developers who want a piece of the island’s action.
“It’s a trophy property,” said Rob Frisbie, of Palm Beach-based development firm the Frisbie Group.
Despite the price tag, it wasn’t radically idealistic when Zeidman proposed residents band together to build a park. Palm Beach is home, either seasonally or full-time, to dozens of billionaires. Stephen Schwarzman, Nelson Peltz, Ken Griffin and William Lauder are a few that come to mind. The billionaire headcount doesn’t include the numerous other residents with nine-figure net worths who could chip in.
But Wells Fargo, who declined to comment on their plans for the property, had already found a buyer when that January meeting unfolded: the Frisbies.
The plans were drawn up. Watercolors of the renderings showed the historic facades of the landmarked buildings on the property perfectly restored with verdant landscaping, palm trees and the vivid magenta of bougainvillea climbing the walls. The Frisbies’ vision included 37 residential units spanning between 3,500 square feet and 8,000 square feet and a 35,000-square-foot commercial space slated for Wells Fargo. Designs included nods to Palm Beach’s “Big Five” architects: John Volk, Maurice Fatio, Addison Mizner, Howard Major and Marion Sims Wyeth, all of whom are credited with shaping the island’s architectural legacy.
“It’s the last, last, last piece of property in a very fabulous location that could become green and could just be a park.”
The Frisbies had some supporters in that first meeting. Paul Leone, the longtime CEO of Palm Beach’s historic Breakers hotel, was among them.
“Wells Fargo is not going to sit on a parking lot for another 50 years,” he said. Leone was making plain the reality of the situation: Like it or not, change is coming. “Who better to develop it than the Frisbie Group, our neighbors with a track record.”
Opposition to real estate development, run-of-the-mill NIMBYism, is a reality of doing business. But in Palm Beach, the objecting neighbors tend to be scions of famous families and fortunes whose ties and influence are far reaching.
“I’m also concerned that another family like mine is even proposing this,” said Tina Fanjul at the development review, who is a longtime resident, real estate agent and ex-wife of billionaire Cuban sugar baron Alfy Fanjul. “Yes, that property is going to have to be developed, but I don’t think this is the right way.”
In an emotional plea, she evoked the revolution that exiled her family with a Cuban expression.
“We never heard the thunder,” she said. “I beg the town council to hear the thunder today, because when lightning strikes, it’s too late.”
The thunder, in this instance, appears to be the Frisbies. But Fanjul’s denouncement of the project was hardly the harshest criticism levied. Liza Pulitzer, the daughter of late Palm Beach icon Lilly Pulitzer and great-granddaughter of the newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer, spoke against the Frisbies’ plans at the January meeting, and again in March at a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. While she admired the aesthetics of the design, she called the project a “disaster for the island.”
“I think that the Frisbie Group is here today to basically make as much money as they possibly can by putting as many houses as they possibly can on this property,” Pulitzer, a top real estate agent on the island, said. “We now think of ourselves as besieged by development. It’s everywhere. It’s impacted all of our lives.”
She delivered a foreboding warning: “We are at the gate of turning something we have control of into something that we’re all going to be incredibly unhappy with.”
Shortly after that meeting, the Frisbie Group withdrew its application, saying it was going back to the drawing board. But new plans never materialized.
“Everything there is on pause,” Rob Frisbie said last month. “If it’s ever going to move forward at all.”
Stalemate
The Frisbies aren’t the only developers who’ve been battered and bruised trying to get a project done in Palm Beach. Lester Woerner, who bought the historic Paramount Theater for $14 million in 2021, has yet to win approval for any of his plans. In July, the town council rejected his proposal for a 475-member private club.
“The town, I believed, wanted the Paramount restored. It won’t get restored now, but we’re going to maximize the use of the Paramount, as we told you before,” Woerner said in the meeting. “We are going to look at all remedies that we can from a legal standpoint, because we believe the town was disserved today. It’s a sad situation, but you leave us no choice.”
The council responded curtly, “We’ll see you in court.”
Other developers hit snags even after approval. Jeremy Sclar’s WS Development started an extensive renovation of the Royal Poinciana Playhouse last summer, which involved demolishing most of the landmark. The construction triggered an outcry from local officials and residents.
If it isn’t already clear, development is tightly controlled in Palm Beach.
“If anything, we are trying to decrease our population [and] our building on the island. We love the way our island is.”
The 16-mile long barrier island was first developed more than a century ago by Standard Oil magnate Henry Flagler, and his fellow Gilded Age barons joined him in establishing winter homes there. Many of the early estates were sprawling compounds — Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Mar-a-Lago (now famously owned by Donald Trump) spanned 17 acres, Carnegie Steel’s Phipps family owned most of the island’s north end. Today, the island has fewer than 2,500 homes. The commercial sectors are concentrated in the heart of the island, primarily along Royal Palm Way, South County Road and Worth Avenue. Most of the construction that happens on the island concerns single-family homes.
In addition to the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Town Council, proposed projects must undergo the withering scrutiny of the Architectural Commission (Arcom).
“It’s ugly,” “It’s bad design” and “I just don’t like it,” are common death knells heard for plans presented in Arcom.
Ruling development with this iron fist has worked for Palm Beach for a long time, but now it is straining against unprecedented economic forces bringing more people and wealth to the island than ever before.
The boom boomed
The pandemic triggered a wave of migration and price growth in Palm Beach, and broadly across South Florida, that has sustained growth far beyond the worst days of Covid. It has remade the island as a haven for billionaires, and established it as a leading ultra-luxury market on the global stage.
Palm Beach was always an expensive island, a hub for America’s wealthy elite. But now, it’s the country’s top trophy market, having the highest concentration of homes priced at $50 million or more. The median price for single-family homes has jumped to $9.5 million, double what it was in January 2020, according to Redfin.
Two homes this year have sold for more than $100 million: in May, spec developer Todd Glaser and his partners sold Tarpon Island for $152 million, and in June, Daren Metropoulos, who also owns the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, dropped $148 million on an oceanfront estate.
The influx of residents has stretched the capacity of the island. Classrooms are full in the area’s private schools, private clubs have years-long waitlists and Palm Beachers now contend with traffic that would be unimaginable just a few years ago. Longtime residents, like Pulitzer, feel their party is being crashed and want a plan to bounce unwanted newcomers.
“If anything we are trying to decrease our population [and] our building on the island,” she said in the January meeting. “We love the way our island is.”
How the West was won
Palm Beach’s resistance to growth is in stark contrast to its neighbor, West Palm Beach. The city is embracing developers, and now has millions of square feet of office, retail and condo projects in the pipeline. Luxury condos are rapidly rising on the waterfront and remaking the skyline. Steve Ross’ planned South Flagler House where prices start at $5.9 million, Related Group and BH Group’s planned Ritz-Carlton Residences, West Palm Beach and Savanna’s planned Olara are just a few of the towers set to rise in the next few years.
The ambition to transform the city is palpable. Earlier this summer, Ross, the 84-year-old billionaire Related Companies founder, stepped down from his longtime role as chairman and launched a new venture solely focused on South Florida. His new firm, Related Ross, has absorbed all of Related Southeast’s West Palm Beach projects and its 2.8 million square feet of commercial properties there.
Ross has been a major advocate of Vanderbilt University’s proposal for a $520 million campus in the heart of downtown West Palm Beach. He spoke in favor of the expansion at a Palm Beach Board of County Commissioners meeting in August, putting in explicit terms how he conceives of West Palm Beach’s future.
“This whole county in the future will become what Silicon Valley is today,” he said.
The metamorphosis of West Palm Beach is picking up momentum and investment, local leaders and real estate players alike speak of it as predestined. What remains to be seen is how Palm Beach adapts to the same market dynamics.
Can an island of billionaires successfully fight off development? Or is this another small town, with its obligatory NIMBYs, waging an unwinnable battle with Zeidman and others’ “magical thinking?”
“I know change is inevitable,” Ted Cooney, a councilman said at the January meeting. “I know that the best use of this land is not a parking lot, and it’s unlikely to stay in that form.”