Developer picks up 314-unit multifamily dev site at Palm Beach County’s Ag Reserve

A multifamily firm scooped up a development site approved for a 314-unit apartment complex in Palm Beach County’s Agricultural Reserve. 

An entity tied to Scottsdale, Arizona-based BB Living bought the 39.2-acre vacant site at 11275 Acme Dairy Road in unincorporated Palm Beach County for $24 million from three family trusts, according to records and real estate database Vizzda. The sellers are Barbara M. Logan, as trustee of the Barbara M. Logan Revocable Trust; Cecily Dereuil Fazio and James J. Dereuil, as co-trustees of the Barbara R. Dereuil Revocable Trust; as well as David M. Bargas, Nancy L. Jankovsky and Susan J. Griffin, as co-trustees of the John Bargas Trust. 

The buyer took out a $63 million construction loan, according to records and Vizzda. Western Alliance Bank is listed as a lender and administrative agent on behalf of other lenders.

Toll Brothers, a Fort Washington, Pennsylvania-based homebuilder that also has a multifamily division, and TPG Real Estate, an arm of alternative asset manager TPG, could be involved in the project. Both are listed as borrowers of the construction loan, records show. 

Toll, TPG and BB Living representatives didn’t immediately return inquiries about the project and development team. 

Palm Beach County commissioners approved The Ellie at Logan Ranch complex on the site in August. It will consist of six four-story buildings and seven two-story buildings, with 79 of the apartments designated as workforce housing. 

Developer Brett Gelsomino, through his Gelsomino Holding, had filed the project application and obtained approval last year, with plans to purchase the site for an undisclosed price. In August, he told The Real Deal that the workforce units would target households earning from 60 percent to 140 percent of the area median income. 

Gelsomino declined to comment on BB Living’s purchase of the site, and whether he is still involved in the project. 

The Ellie at Logan Ranch marks the latest development at the Ag Reserve. The roughly 22,000-acre swath of land is west of Boca Raton and east of the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge. Despite an outcry from environmentalists over ecological and farmland impacts from construction at the reserve, commissioners have approved several projects there. To build in the reserve, developers have to leave 60 acres untouched for every 40 acres they develop. 

The Ellie at Logan Ranch was approved under an “essential housing” zoning that’s meant to prompt more multifamily construction at the Ag Reserve. Most other planned projects are single-family homes. 

Sunrise-based GL Homes plans a 1,000-plus age-restricted community on 682 acres at the Ag Reserve.