🛋️ Home, sweet home
Welcome to Tuesday. At last, some affordable housing, pier pressure, wages, racetrack owners await a decision, a stash van and idyllic rowing.
Today’s newsletter is a 7-minute read.
First up: Two new apartment buildings open in WPB’s Northwest
Two game-changing apartment buildings, long under construction, are beginning to fill with residents in West Palm Beach’s Northwest Neighborhood.
The Grand, a 309-unit building at Third Street and Rosemary Avenue, opens in May.
Flagler Station, a 94-unit building at Tamarind Avenue and Banyan Boulevard, opened in March. It’s already fully occupied.
Both offer below-market rents, but pricing at the two eight-story buildings are quite different.
Flagler Station, a $33 million project backed by tax credits, can rent only to people who earn between 30 percent and 80 percent of Area Median Income, which is $90,300 in Palm Beach County.
The Grand set aside about a fifth of its units for renters in the 80 percent income level and another fifth for those earning 100 percent of AMI but also is renting a third of its units at market rate, meaning one of its eight three-bedroom townhouses could go for as much as $3,975 a month.
The city played a big role in The Grand, providing $10 million of the $85 million project costs and the promise of up to $5 million over 13 years in property tax refunds.
Flagler Station received $500,000 from the city plus a $75,000 loan; and grants and loans through Palm Beach County topping $850,000.
Affiliated Development of Fort Lauderdale began assembling The Grand property in 2018. Affiliated just won city approval for a 270-unit building, The Spruce, on the big empty block west of Spruce Avenue between 24th and 25th streets. Armed with $2.5 million from the city, a third of those units will be for those earning 100 percent of AMI or less.
The Housing Trust Group of Coconut Grove built Flagler Station, which is kitty-corner to the downtown Tri-Rail station.
The Northwest Neighborhood is historically Black and predominantly low-income.
As Joel points out here, in its 120-plus years, the neighborhood has never seen such a large investment in apartment buildings.
⛱️ Let’s do some beach math!
It may be too soon to know if Benny’s on the Beach will pack up the linens and silverware and make good on Lee Lipton’s threat to leave his oceanfront eatery.
The flurry of figures thrown about in the Lake Worth Beach Commission meeting on his city lease focused on raising the rent from $32.92 to $42. Lipton balked at the increase. Commissioner balked at renewing the lease without it.
But there are five more bits of math:
10 years. The rent hike would have been the first since 2013.
$13.64. That’s the per-square-foot maintenance fee paid to the city by a neighbor of Benny’s, LW Tee Shirt Co. It pushes the retailer’s total indoor square foot charges to $61.34 as of last year, almost double the $32.69 paid by Benny’s.
Other nearby businesses with city leases pay similar charges. As of last year, Mama Mia’s pizza’s indoor lease rate of $47.70 per square foot totaled $55.93 with maintenance fees; Kilwin’s indoor square foot charges were $34.07 without maintenance fees; $47.46 with.
Zero. Benny’s assumes the costs of maintaining his property and some maintenance on the pier, but is not required to pay maintenance fees to the city.
92,158. That's the number of visitors to the Lake Worth Beach pier in 2019. Benny’s collects city pier admission fees, somewhere between $1 and $5 per person, varying on whether someone is fishing or just enjoying the walk.
Benny’s also keeps some of those fees for managing admissions on behalf of the city.
Fuzzy. Some commissioners at the April 18 meeting seemed unclear as to exactly how much money Benny’s was getting from pier admissions. And the business might be losing money on it.
Read more: Joe Capozzi breaks down the dispute.
💵 Hardball: Billionaires swing at ballplayers, hit local bricklayers, more
Baseball started it. Uber-rich baseball team owners flocked to Tallahassee this year. Their goal: a legislative runaround.
Florida voters mandated a state $15-an-hour minimum wage in 2020, starting at $11 an hour and rising through 2025.
Owners want a loophole so they don’t have to pay Florida minor league players the $11.
Locally, that means players in fan favorites Palm Beach Cardinals and Jupiter Hammerheads minor league systems.
It’s a long-standing national dispute over stunningly low minor league wages. Florida has an outsized role because 12 minor league teams play here.
Jason Garcia reports House legislators tacked on an amendment that would also eliminate living-wage ordinances adopted by Palm Beach County.
For two decades, businesses contracting with PBC on construction and certain transportation projects have been required to pay living wages calculated by the county.
The House amendment essentially strips PBC and other counties, cities and towns of the ability to ensure workers on taxpayer-funded projects be paid something closer to a local living wage.
Two reasons to care: First, in this county, $11 an hour is a struggle wage.
A living wage is $18.12 an hour for a single person in Palm Beach County, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For a family of four, the paycheck needs to top $40 an hour.
Second, the bill is part of a broader effort to consolidate power in Tallahassee, leaving local governments without the flexibility to make rules reflecting local needs.
What’s next? This week may determine whether the amended bill gets to a floor vote.
May as well go to a ballgame while we wait. The Hammerheads and Cardinals will play dozens of home games at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium in Jupiter this season. Check out the schedule here.
🚗 Racetrack vs. warehouses
Converting Palm Beach International Raceway into a warehouse complex would raise the value of the 175-acre industrial property on the Beeline Highway to $77 million, an appraiser said last week.
Walter Duke, a real estate appraiser and former mayor of Dania Beach, valued the property as it is now at $10.9 million. He made the calculations for owner IRG Sports & Entertainment, which argued in a court-like hearing that Palm Beach County had no reason to turn down its plans for a 2.2 million-square-foot warehouse complex.
IRG is applying a state law meant to protect private property rights from unfair governmental decisions.
The hearing is the first step. The ruling from the retired administrative law judge who heard arguments for four hours April 19 merely goes back to the governmental body that made the decision in the first place. He will make a decision by May 3.
The Palm Beach County Commission has the right to reject the judge’s findings.
Rejection likely would throw the whole thing into Palm Beach County Circuit Court, where the landowners would argue that the commission’s decision is depriving them of lost earnings and land value equal to $81 million, again as determined by Duke.
Why are we here? Ever since IRG, owned by investment firm Sixth Street, shuttered the former Moroso Motorsports Park in April 2022, fans of the quarter-mile dragstrip and 2.2-mile road course have been packing meetings to block the company’s plans. On Jan. 26, county commissioners voted 4-2 to reject the request, even though warehouses are a use by right in the racetrack’s industrial district.
Joel has been covering the racetrack closure since before the last race and reported on the hearing here.
🍅 The juice
Fresh-squeezed news from all over
👩🏽🍳 The state announced Friday that the West Palm Beach area’s unemployment rate was 2.6 percent in March, down slightly from 2.9 percent a year ago. Last month, the West Palm Beach metro area’s workforce was up 18,131 (+2.4 percent) over the previous year.
Gaining the most jobs over the year: leisure and hospitality, up 4,700, and education and health services, also up 4,700. (Department of Economic Development)
🥾 Restaurant owner Rodney Mayo said he learned that the city will not renew his downtown West Palm Beach lease for Subculture Coffee when it expires in September.
This spring, Mayo lost his city lease on the adjacent Artist Alley and the city permit to close the 500 block of Clematis Street on weekends. Mayo had waged a brief challenge to Mayor Keith James’ reelection campaign. (WPBF)
🚲 West Palm Beach’s Jack The Bike Man is facing a deadline. He is trying to raise enough money to continue fixing bikes and giving them away, as well as to provide a community center in the city’s Flamingo Park neighborhood. Joe Capozzi’s Palm Beach Stories takes a look at the man and his efforts to cement his legacy.
📈 Quiz answer: Cannabis count
Last week, we asked: How many cigarettes could be rolled based on the 96,012 ounces of medical marijuana legally sold in Florida the week of Feb. 17-23.
And the answer is More than 8 million!
There are some very relaxed people in Florida.
Feel free to argue the math. For years, people have disagreed over how much marijuana was in the average cigarette.
It wasn’t back of the page scribbling either. Especially before medical marijuana and decriminalization policies gained momentum, police and policymakers alike had an interest in calculating amounts of marijuana.
In 2016, the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence reported academics had done the math and arrived at a definitive answer: 0.32 grams per joint. That was our starting number.
One gram would produce about three cigarettes. There are slightly more than 28 grams to an ounce. Florida sold 96,012 ounces.
Beyond medical marijuana sales, Smart & Safe Florida is working to effectively decriminalize possession and use for any Florida adult 21 and older.
More than 1 million petition signatures have been gathered in its drive to get the issue in front of voters on the 2024 ballot, the group says.
The money muscle behind the campaign is Florida pot powerhouse Trulieve. The company, which has eight dispensaries in Palm Beach County, has put $20 million into the effort, The News Service of Florida reports.
The Florida star power backing the drive is country music duo The Bellamy Brothers. The 70-something musicians, who own a Pasco ranch, are teaming with Trulieve.
Read the petition here, and the group’s reasoning, here.
And don’t rob yourself of a chance to check out the Bellamy Brothers’ just-unveiled Old Hippie Stash Mobile.
🚣🏼♂️ 561 insider: Fast, fun, flat rowing among manatees, dolphins
Have you ever rowed a shell?
That’s what the long, sleek, lightweight carbon fiber and reinforced plastic boats are called that participants paddle at the North Palm Beach Rowing Club.
What’s happening: Launched in 2007, the rowing club offers adult classes, camp for youth in grades 6 to 12 and an opportunity to row competitively or for recreation.
Details: The club headquarters is at Bert Winters Park off Ellison Wilson Road. Its training course is on the Intracoastal Waterway, which is sheltered by trees and a ridge line. That provides consistently flat conditions.
The club notes that means fast, fun and flat rowing among manatees and dolphins. Not alligators.
Youth and adult rowers from the club have competed in the Olympics, gone on to college scholarships and represented their home team in nationwide rowing regattas.
North Palm Beach Rowing Club
13425 Ellison Wilson Rd., North Palm Beach (561) 691-0912
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