It’s not unusual for ambitious projects to stall for years and then to fizzle out entirely, due to financial woes or the hassle of government approvals. Yet, a project lingering for almost two decades making a major comeback is rare.
That’s the story of Transit Village, a planned, massive mixed-use development that would rise atop a major West Palm Beach bus station and next to a transit hub for Tri-Rail and Amtrak passenger trains, and Greyhound buses.
Billionaire Jorge Pérez’s Related Group and Teddy Sagi’s Globe Invest invested in Michael Masanoff’s project last year, and the developers just scored a city board’s approval for new plans, overhauling those approved in 2015.
The West Palm Beach Downtown Action Committee voted 4-1 on Wednesday, a final step before Transit Village can obtain site plan approval. Although city planning staff members generally aired in favor of the new plans, they raised concerns, including over one of the building’s designs and the garage podium façade.
Transit Village would span 1.3 million square feet in four 25-story buildings on 6.6 acres at 150 Clearwater Drive, according to city records.
Plans call for 986 residential units across three towers along the western and northern portion of the site, as well as 180,000 square feet of offices and 108 hotel keys in a tower on the property’s southern tip, the developers’ application and city records show. The residences will include 165 micro-units, and of the remaining 821 units, 42 will be workforce housing.
Transit Village also will have 49,000 square feet of retail. The buildings will connect to a nine-story podium, elevated to almost 100 feet, with roughly 2,000 parking spaces, records show.
Compared with the 2015 plans, the developers decreased the hotel keys by nearly 200, and the office space by 120,000 square feet, but increased the residential units by 578, and doubled the retail space. They also scrapped 12 live-work units.
The reason for the project stalling isn’t clear, although a source indicated it had to do with numerous amendments to agreements with government agencies that were necessary because of changes of plans. Masanoff didn’t return a request for comment.
In 2010, he won a request for proposals by Palm Beach County, which owns the site, to develop the property. The city also was involved in the committee that selected the developer.
The developers are under contract to purchase the site for an undisclosed price from the county.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Masanoff pushed for approval, saying agreements with governmental agencies come with deadlines. “Our clock is ticking,” he said.
Pérez’s Miami-based Related Group and Sagi’s Cyprus-based Globe Invest family office invested in the project along with BH Group, a mysterious investment firm that The Real Deal tied to Isaac Toledano.
Construction is expected to start in the first quarter of next year, Related President Jon Paul Pérez told the board.
The site is “the hole in the doughnut,” he said, referring to construction surrounding it, including a University of Florida campus slated to rise west of Transit Village.
Among the issues city planner Chris Kimmerly raised is that the upper floors of the northernmost building don’t step down, or progressively drop in height to minimize the impact on an adjacent historic property on the corner of Banyan Boulevard and Tamarind Avenue.
“It’s a historic building but it’s also an industrial building,” board member Brian Cheguis responded, adding that more construction is bound to rise around it. “We are recreating the vernacular across here and creating that new edge.”