Related Cos. vying for W. Palm Beach ‘tent’ site

CityPlace, across from vacant 2.4-acre site
CityPlace, across from vacant 2.4-acre site

Longtime South Florida rivals Related Cos. of New York and Michael McCloskey of West Palm Beach are in a horse race for a 2.4-acre site in downtown West Palm Beach, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Related recently triumphed over McCloskey in a decade-long battle to redesign the city’s convention center with a new hotel, a bid city project muddied by a commissioner’s being sent to prison on federal fraud charges.

The parcel, at the corner of Okeechobee Boulevard and South Dixie Highway, is known as the tent site because of the large tents that were pitched there in the early 2000s, the Post said. HUB Holdings of Abu Dhabi is the third contender for the West Palm Beach site.

Related wants to pre-lease its future 12-story Gateway Tower office building, which will be built on a triangle patch of land on Okeechobee Boulevard across from Related’s CityPlace Tower building, which the company developed and sold.

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“Between Gateway and the tent site, that’s 600,000 square feet of space, or twice the size of CityPlace Tower,” Niel Marin, chairman of NAI/Merin Junter Codman in West Palm Beach, told the Post, questioning how quickly the area could be occupied.

Related could bank the tent site and wait for opportunities, a broker suggested to the Post.

“In the game of Monopoly, it’s as close as you can get to Park Place,” Peter Reed, a principal at Commercial Florida Realty Services in Boca Raton, told the paper. [Palm Beach Post]Emily Schmall