Avenir will have age-restricted homes, may include golf course, artificial lagoon

Coral Gables-based Landstar Development Group’s massive Avenir development in Palm Beach Gardens will have age-restricted housing and may include a golf course and an artificial lagoon.

Construction of Avenir is tentatively planned to start in fall. The development in western Palm Beach Gardens will be built in phases over 20 to 30 years.

Crews have started clearing the 4,763-acre site of the mixed-use development, designed to include 1.8 million square feet of office space, 400,000 square feet of commercial space, 200,000 square feet of medical offices, a 300-room hotel, and a public park.

Avenir also will encompass 3,900 homes, including 960 for people 55 and older and 250 for that will serve as work-force housing.

Possible components of Avenir include an artificial lagoon and beach that would be installed by Crystal Lagoons, a company with 16 offices around the world.

Crystal Lagoons opened its first artificial lagoon earlier this year near Tampa in Wesley Chapel.

The Palm Beach Gardens city council also has decided to allow Landstar to build a private golf course on a residential parcel at Avenir.

A golf course and an artificial lagoon are possible components of Avenir that “we are thinking about … to make this project unique,” Rosa Schechter, a principal of Landstar, told the Palm Beach Post.

Schechter also told the newspaper that Landstar plans to include a charter or private school in the Avenir development.

Landstar offered 15 acres of the Avenir development site in Palm Beach Gardens for a public elementary school, but the Palm Beach County School District rejected the offer.

Landstar instead will pay the school district $1.39 million to cover the cost of Avenir’s impact on the county’s public school system. [Palm Beach Post] – Mike Seemuth