'Unpreserving the Ag Reserve'
Palm Beach County Commission moves forward with controversial land swap that opponents say will undo decades of preservation
Supporters of a land swap that threatened to gut Palm Beach County’s decades-long efforts to save farmland in the Agricultural Reserve told commissioners at a May 3 hearing it would be OK to approve the swap because the Ag Reserve was beyond saving.
Development predominates, they said. Saving farmland has failed. The horse has left the barn.
Not so, county planners said in their report recommending denial of the land swap: because of the rules, home-building soon would come to an end.
The planners traced the arc of County Commission decisions starting in 1980 with pro-farming rules that effectively blocked development to 1995 when commissioners eased rules to allow some development so long as some farms remained.
County efforts culminated in 1999, when voters agreed to pay $100 million to buy and preserve some farmland, further reducing the area’s development potential.
After two decades of intense growth only 582 vacant acres, 3 percent, remain in play for developers. Development would account for about one-third of the 22,000-acre region; preserved land and farming would account for most of the rest.
The land that looks to passersby like fertile fields for development could never be built upon because county commissioners promised it would never be built upon.
The County Commission’s May 3 vote to allow GL Homes’ to develop preserve land cast that promise into disarray.
“If we are going to break the Ag Reserve, I think that we should do it in a more deliberate way,” County Commissioner Marci Woodward urged her colleagues. “I don't like this project, specifically because it is unpreserving the Ag Reserve.”
Bond issue bought, preserved 2,400 acres
The county first approved rules severely limiting development in the Ag Reserve in 1980 to save the growing region’s prolific soil while sparing farmers from development pressures.
It didn’t work.
Farmers began agitating to ease those rules in the 1990s, as they watched farmers in Broward and Dade counties make huge windfalls selling to developers.
The lobbying culminated in a 1995 Palm Beach County Commission decision to reset development options in the Ag Reserve. Landowners could build on 40 percent of their land at suburban densities if they preserved 60 percent of their land.
As would become important in the GL Homes land swap, the preserved parcel did not have to adjoin the development parcel. But it had to be in the Ag Reserve, which extended from Clint Moore Road nearly as far north as Hypoluxo Road between Florida’s Turnpike and the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.
Even by those rules, commissioners soon realized they had made it too easy to develop. So many homes could be built, studies showed, that farming would be jeopardized.
With Commissioners Karen Marcus and Burt Aaronson leading the way, the county promoted a $100 million bond issue to buy Ag Reserve farmland to keep it in farming.
The approach aimed to strike a balance: Farmers wouldn’t miss out on the golden land rush and south county wouldn’t be overwhelmed by growth.
The referendum also asked voters for $50 million to buy land elsewhere in the county. It passed with 66 percent of the vote.
In the end, the county spent $88 million to buy 2,400 acres in the Ag Reserve, land that would not be eligible to be used as a preserve.
That still left plenty of land for housing. And GL Homes stepped up to become the dominant builder, working closely with county officials to develop 14 communities in the reserve, says a 2019 South Florida Business Journal story posted on GL’s website.
Among the key executives overseeing the program was GL’s vice president of land management, Kevin Ratterree, who came to GL after working as a county planner in the 1990s.
In the first decade of the 2000s, while home prices soared, GL also made two large investments.
It paid $185 million in 2005 for the rundown 4,866-acre Indian Trails citrus grove west of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road in The Acreage.
Three years later, it paid the Hyder family $117 million for 1,068 acres straddling State Road 7 in the south end of the Ag Reserve.
It would take years but those two properties would play pivotal roles in the land swap.
Preserves aren’t forever
GL’s proposal could be stripped down to a simple political calculation of south vs. north.
With a land swap, fewer homes would be built in north county, meaning fewer cars on roads.
If there’s no swap, fewer homes would be built in south county with the same benefit in traffic reduction.
The proposal came up last year at the request of Commissioner Melissa McKinlay, because of the relief it would bring in her district, particularly in the Royal Palm Beach/Acreage area. It was supported by her successor, Sara Baxter.
The two votes opposing the land swap came from south county Commissioners Marcia Sachs and Woodward.
With the swap, GL would build homes on a vacant, preserve parcel west of Boca Raton in the Ag Reserve called Hyder West. In exchange, it would preserve land in its vast undeveloped swath west of The Acreage.
Hyder West is in the far southern reaches of the Ag Reserve. South of it, communities thrive, some even farther west than Hyder West. Marketed as west Boca, houses built on Hyder West could command a staggering price.
But Hyder West is north of Clint Moore Road and so has long been protected as part of the Ag Reserve.
It’s also west of State Road 7/US Route 441, where the county imposed even stricter limits on development to protect the nearby wildlife refuge.
Rather than succumb to those limits over the past 15 years, GL set Hyder West aside as a very expensive preserve to meet county requirements to build six other communities east of State Road 7 — Seven Bridges, Valencia Reserve, Canyon Lakes, Canyon Isles, Canyon Springs and Whitworth Farms.
County rules in the Ag Reserve say preserves are forever.
GL wanted county commissioners to change that.
GL’s proposal spelled out
To persuade commissioners to violate their own conservation rules, GL needed to offer sweeteners.
Instead of preserving land elsewhere in the Ag Reserve, as required, GL proposed preserving land at Indian Trails Grove.
GL would take 534 acres out of preservation in the Ag Reserve to build on 582 acres there while preserving 670 acres at Indian Trails Grove.
In exchange, GL would be allowed to build 1,000 high-end homes plus 277 workforce homes on Hyder West.
The move would set a critical precedent. If the land swap went through, builders could go anywhere in the county to “unpreserve” Ag Reserve preserves, opponents warned.
“This is a fundamental change,” Principal Planner Bryan Davis told commissioners.
But GL offered to do more than preserve land at Indian Trails Grove. It would give the land to the county, part of a 1,600-acre donation. A little more than half of that land would be converted into a reservoir, at GL’s expense. The remaining 725 acres would be farmland.
The county would be trading one farm for another, with the added benefit of water storage in north county.
The swap would mean trimming the number of homes that the county approved in 2016 for Indian Trails Grove. GL would eliminate 1,285 homes, reducing the property’s development potential to 2,612 homes.
The deal would not stop GL from retiring more of those units in the future to allow even more construction in the Ag Reserve.
Who gets what?
To further sweeten the pot, GL promised the county 25 acres for an active park at Hyder West and 75 acres surrounding a drainage lake for a passive park. County staff said they needed a 50-acre active park but no commissioners voiced support for pressing GL on the issue.
Several rabbis and representatives of Jewish groups favored the land swap because GL promised 12 acres for a synagogue and Jewish home for the elderly.
GL’s founder, Itchko Ezratti, was born in Israel. His son, Misha Ezratti, runs the company.
“We have to also look at the tremendous partnership GL has offered to so many different organizations here in the southern part of the county including Torah Academy,” said Rabbi Chaim Glazer, the Torah Academy’s administrator. “This project will not only be a boon for the northern part of the county, I believe this project will also be a boon for many of our constituents in the southern part of the county.”
Residents of Stonebridge, immediately south, supported the project as well after GL provided some inducements, including better road access and funneling GL residents to Stonebridge’s golf course.
To Boca Landings resident Meryl Davids, however, the sweeteners were just too much.
“The gentleman from GL Homes talked about this being a straightforward business proposal. But as I was listening to him, I felt like I was at an Oprah Winfrey show: You get a car and you get a car and you get a car. Somebody gets an entrance to their community and somebody gets workforce housing and somebody gets water and somebody gets a temple,” Davids said. “If this development was really such a great plan, it should be able to stand on its own without all these sweeteners being thrown in.”
Reservoir value drops to $115 million
GL put the value of its Acreage reservoir at $150 million on a website to promote the deal.
But at the May 3 hearing, that figure shrank.
When asked by County Commissioner Michael Barnett to break down the cost of the water project, GL’s Ratterree put it at $115 million.
That’s $100 million for the 1,600 acres at about $60,000 an acre, the lowest price of preserve land in the Ag Reserve, Ratterree said. Permitting and building a 4-foot-deep reservoir and associated structures would cost no more than $15 million, he said.
By shrinking its Indian Trails Grove development, GL would be required to build 129 fewer workforce housing units there, 261 instead of 390.
‘It comes down to my gut’
Commissioners heard from 68 speakers Wednesday during a nearly six-hour meeting and received emails and petitions from thousands more.
Woodward, who represents a south county district, said she couldn’t support a piecemeal decision that would undo years of carefully calculated actions. Perhaps preserve rules could be expanded to include uses like synagogues, she said.
“I would like to find a better way to do it. A way that at the end of this I can look at myself in the mirror and still like what I see,” she said. “And I can't support this, just because of that. It comes down to my gut.”
Commissioner Maria Sachs, who represents the Ag Reserve, spoke for 20 minutes, attacking GL’s ability to construct a water project and its past commitment to workforce housing, asking why regional water managers weren’t there to support GL’s reservoir proposal and wondering how it helps the environment to provide water storage up north while building homes on the edge of the Everglades down south.
“Folks, it's like a shell game,” she said. “Look up here. What we're going to put up here in north county, but down here where we have a conservation area, we're going to build houses right up to it.”
GL plans to place rental and for-sale workforce housing units next to the horse stables of Sunshine Meadows, Sachs said. “You can’t put kids and families and seniors up against the horse stables,” she said.
And to top it off, there’s no public transportation on State Road 7. “How are we going to have workforce housing with no public transportation?”
Baxter seeks 200-acre ATV park
Commissioner Baxter reasoned that the swap would save more land in Indian Trails than had been preserved in the Ag Reserve. “That was huge for me,” she said.
It also would mean GL would build more workforce housing overall than previously planned.
But the deciding factor for her was that reducing Indian Trails by 1,285 homes helps her district. In fact, she said GL indicated an interest in providing an extra 200 acres in Indian Trails Grove for an ATV park, and she made that provision part of her motion to approve.
Commissioner Maria Marino, who represents a north county district where fewer homes would help reduce traffic on overtaxed Northlake Boulevard, went through six of the county’s strategic budget priorities and said the land swap meets them all.
“Public safety isn't just police and fire,” she said. “It's water storage. It's keeping people safe from flooding.”
Referring to studies that put the cost of a water project in that area at $400 million, she said, “This is an opportunity for us to get this property without having to pay for it.”
Commissioner Mack Bernard, who had opposed moving forward with the land swap in votes last year, said the reservoir’s potential for helping water quality in West Palm Beach changed his mind.
“This is a risk that we're taking but I am going to tell you today that I am going to support this motion because I believe that even if it's minuscule to be able to provide the water for the residents of West Palm Beach, you know, that's the risk that I'm willing to take,” Bernard said.
Commissioner Barnett appeared to dismiss concerns about precedent.
“I understand also that the board that existed just four months ago, let alone 24 years ago, had different priorities than this current board may have today,” Barnett said.
Mayor Gregg Weiss never spelled out his reasons for supporting the swap.
Even before the 5-2 vote in favor, staff interrupted to ask the board to spell out exactly what it wanted from GL, a move that steered the conversation toward how best to say yes.
The vote sends the proposal to a second stage, where even more details can be worked out before it returns to the commission in a few months.
For McKinlay, who attended, the “fabulous” decision does not set a precedent anyone else can meet. “No other owner is lined up to present a proposal like this,” she said after the meeting. “I don’t think there is anyone else able to reach that high bar.”
But to another former commissioner, Marcus of Sustainable Palm Beach County, it jeopardizes not just the Ag Reserve but all the county’s many nature preserves. “Now everything’s back on the table,” she said.