The Related Group, Forest Development and Sonnenblick Development each made their cases before the Riviera Beach City Council this week on why they should be allowed to develop about 12 acres of public land near the waterfront at Marina Village.
But with only three city council members present at their meeting on Wednesday, a vote on who should be awarded a contract with the city was delayed yet again.
No reason was given as to why council members Shirley D. Lanier and KaShamba L. Miller-Anderson were absent from the May 13 Community Redevelopment Agency meeting. Council Chairperson Bruce Guyton said he was “so ready to move this thing forward tonight” but moved to defer a vote to a special meeting, sometime between May 20 and May 22, so Lanier and Miller-Anderson can have a chance to cast their votes.
“This would be the second time we put this vote off and I am just not feeling it,” Guyton said. “… I am not doing it a third time. I’m just not.”
The previous delay Guyton referred to occurred on Feb. 25 when Lanier, then the chair of the CRA and the council, suddenly canceled that meeting after FBI agents reportedly seized records from Guyton, Lanier and Mayor Douglas Lawson related to efforts to develop Marina Village, an 80-acre assemblage of public land located just north of the Port of Palm Beach.
Since then, Guyton spearheaded the removal of Riviera Beach’s longtime city manager, Jonathan Evans by a narrow vote of 3 to 2, with Lanier and Miller-Anderson dissenting at a meeting in late April. Guyton also took over as chair earlier this month, when Lanier and Miller-Anderson also cast no votes, Stet News Palm Beach County reported.
Although no vote was taken at the May 13 meeting, the three development teams each made 15-minute presentations. They also answered questions from council members as well as Mayor Lawson, who is a non-voting member of the CRA.
Coconut Grove-based Related Group and its partners received the highest score from a city selection committee. Related Group’s Related Urban, BH Group, Pebb Enterprises and Tezral Partners are working together on their proposal to build a 344-unit hotel and condo, 10 townhomes, a 578-space parking garage with a rooftop sports complex, and a small business incubator.
Jon Paul Pérez, president and CEO of Related Group, told council members that the company his father, Jorge Pérez, founded in 1979 has built 120,000 residential units.
“It’s not just about building pretty buildings and using the best architects and designers. It is also important to know that we are known as place makers. We bring in the community. We bring in the retailers. We bring in the street activation,” Pérez said.
Related Urban, BH and Tezral are already building in Marina Village. The three South Florida development firms are building a 149-unit workforce housing project. They’re also slated to develop a 20-story apartment project with 418 units.
Peter Baytarian’s Forest Development, which received the second highest score, has a 20-story 270-room Marriott Autograph Collection hotel, a 10-story convention/community center up to 100,000 square feet in size, a 20-story condo with a 240-slip dry boat storage facility, and three restaurant commercial buildings in its plans.
The project’s planner, Brian Terry of West Palm Beach-based Insite Studio, touted that Forest Development is a Palm Beach County-based firm that just completed Nautilus 220 just north of Riviera Beach, will soon break ground on Oculina in Riviera Beach, and is finalizing a deal to acquire land from Riviera Beach for a $325 million apartment project.
“We believe that we are uniquely positioned to successfully deliver this project because we are already here,” Terry said.
California-based developer Robert Sonnenblick, head of Sonnenblick Development, proposes building a mixed-use project that will be anchored by a 150-room Compass by Margaritaville, a hotel brand co-founded by the late singer Jimmy Buffet, along with at least one condo building, a waterfront aquarium, a FlowRider surf simulator, and five restaurant buildings.
Sonnenblick told council members that it was his firm, and not Atlanta-based ADP Solutions (which first proposed building a Margaritaville Hotel back in 2023), that had the backing of Margaritaville Enterprises. Sonnenblick also insisted that it was the owners of the Margaritaville at Sea cruise ship, which docks at Port of Palm Beach, who approached him about building a hotel.
“They asked us to do a hotel for their 750-cabin boat down the street. Those 1,500 [passengers] now stay at hotels spread across Palm Beach County the night before and the night after their separate [weekly] trips to the Bahamas. That is a huge amount of customers who don’t stay in Riviera Beach,” said Sonnenblick, who was recently selected to help Riviera Beach officials redevelop about 72 acres of publicly owned land.
Sonnenblick also said he had a $190 million letter of interest to fund the project from a real estate investment fund affiliated with The Related Companies, the New York-based firm founded by developer Stephen Ross and now led by CEO Jeff Blau.
For more than a decade, Riviera Beach officials have sought to redevelop Marina Village to attract more jobs, venues and revenue. However, efforts to complete portions near the waterfront beyond the event center, which was completed in 2015, have repeatedly stalled.
Council Vice Chairperson Glen Spiritis said he was “quite surprised that we don’t have members of the council sitting here today.”
“This project should have been built at least seven or eight years ago,” Spiritis said.
Guyton vowed that next time “will be decision time whether there are three, four, or five” council members present, adding that developers should only be limited to making five-minute prior to that vote.