Sale of apartment complex a no-go

Officials had hoped run-down Belle Glade site would be rebuilt.

BELLE GLADE — Residents will remain at a frequently cited, dilapidated housing complex in the city now that a deal for its sale has fallen through.

Grand Lake Apartments — cited in 2015 for a variet y of health and safety concerns including unsafe or non-existent staircases, rodent infestation, active wasp nests, mold, broken windows, garbage, open sewer cleanout pipes and discarded mattresses and tarps in abandoned swimming pools — was to be sold to a developer that planned to raise $50 million in public and private money for a complete rebuild of the tattered complex.

But that deal has fallen through, l eaving off i c i al s with a s et of unpalatable choices: resettling the roughly 130 households who still live there or repairing some units and using taxpayer-financed housing vouchers to help residents remain in a complex many believe needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

With no place to resettle the families who live in Grand Lake, officials with Palm Beach County, the Palm Beach County Housing Authority and the complex owner, Miami-based developer Ytech International, have chosen to repair units and keep residents there. The plan is to eventually rebuild the complex.

Keeping residents at Grand Lake is not a choice warmly embraced by Commissioner Melissa McKinlay, whose district includes Belle Glade.

McKinlay was initially angered by the prospect of having residents remain at Grand Lake, but, after reviewing options with housing authority officials and others at Ytech, she said keeping residents in their units is the best choice.

“I wish I had housing inventory that I could move these people into, but I don’t,” she said. “They could condemn the buildings and force everyone to move and fam-