Woerner Holdings won preliminary approval to redevelop the landmark Paramount Theatre in Palm Beach into a private club after pivoting to scaled-back mixed-use plans in reaction to a previous rejection.
The family office of Lester Woerner revised its plan to add a residential component and a cafe that will be open to the public, while slashing the size of the club, the Palm Beach Daily News reported.
Woerner cut the club from 45,000 square feet to 5,000 square feet, and trimmed the maximum membership from 475 to 175. The adaptive reuse and renovation will have “church-style seating for 200 guests.”
It will create a single residence on the third and fourth floors of the Paramount, at 139 North County Road, one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks. It features a dome and inner courtyard with a mix of Moorish Revival and Spanish Colonial styles, designed by Austrian architect Joseph Urban.
The 5,400-square-foot cafe will have seating for 80, a neighborhood amenity that wasn’t in the previous plan.
Woerner tapped the Florida Land Use and Environmental Dispute Resolution Act, which allows negotiation without litigation after previous project denials.
Palm Beach City Council rejected Woerner’s redevelopment plan in 2024 because of concerns over traffic, parking and site density, the outlet said. The council discussed the project for four hours and voted to send the plan to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for review. The plan could win final approval next month.
The firm bought the 36,000-square-foot building for $14 million in 2021. The seller was Paramount Church, which bought it in 1996 for $3.7 million. The lot spans 1.3 acres, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places, meaning it could qualify for historic tax abatements.
The theater was built in 1927 and operated until 1980. A previous developer turned it into a retail and office complex. —Rachel Stone