DEVELOPER HAS BIG PLANS FOR WPB’S OLD CITY HALL SITE
Waterfront hotel, apartments, restaurants will soon rise.
WEST PALM BEACH — Developer Navarro Lowrey Inc. bought the West Palm Beach old City Hall site Wednesday morning, paving the way for a $145 million project with a waterfront hotel, apartments and restaurants.
After two years of solicitations, competition, negotiations and demolition at Banyan Boulevard and Second Street, the $11.5 million sale of 3.5 acres closed at 9 a.m.
“They wanted a hotel with its front door to the waterfront and that’s what they’re going to get,” Frank Navarro, managing principal of Navarro Lowrey Inc., said.
The project will be another “destination option for folks from the suburbs who want to come downtown,” not as big as CityPlace but with many attractive amenities, he added.
The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency selected the developer and paid $1.2 million to demolish the site, starting last August. The 1980 structure was empty since the new City Hall opened at Clematis Street and Dixie Highway in 2009.
Plans for the site, which rises behind the Palm Harbor Marina on North Flagler Drive, call for a 208-room Marriott Autograph Collection hotel, 251 live-work apartments, 20,234 square feet of retail space, 6,000 to 7,000 square feet of waterfront restaurant space with indoor and outdoor dining, a 483-space parking garage, a public park with outdoor art, an event lawn and a 3,000-square-foot observation deck 42-feet high, with views of the marina and Intracoastal Waterway.
Construction will start this year and be completed by 2019.
“We wanted to make sure we found a developer that could bring something incredibly dynamic to this coveted waterfront site,” said Jon Ward, executive director of the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency. “This is an important part of the puzzle in terms of our overall strategic vision for our downtown.”
The city is embarking on a number of downtown improvement projects that will be underway at the same time:
On Clematis Street, starting with the 300 block the city is undertaking a streetscape redesign, adding shade trees and wider, curb-less sidewalks with more room for outdoor seating.
The former Off the Hookah nightclub space at 314 Clematis is being divided into 12 smaller retail spaces, with a passageway leading back to the utility alley that also will be transformed into a pedestrian-friendly attraction.
Other projects are in the works to narrow and slow traffic on South Dixie Highway, to make it more pedestrian- and shopper-friendly, while Okeechobee Boulevard fixes are planned to make it safer for pedestrians.
The city this week also approved the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts’ plan for a $40 million expansion and redesign.