Tent site project now has developer, famed architect
WEST PALM BEACH — The team of New York developer Charles Cohen and the Cesar Pelli architecture firm were chosen Monday to submit a proposal for West Palm’s prominent tent site, a gateway location where the city has sought for more than a decade to land a signature project.
After presentations from three developers, the city commissioners, sitting as the Community Redevelopment Agency, overwhelmingly ranked Cohen most qualified for the project, with five votes. Another New York team, Palm Beach Finance Center — which first proposed a project for the site 10 years ago — got two votes. Palm Beach developer Jeff Greene, the city’s biggest landholder, got zero votes, while a fourth group, Aventura-based Immocorp Ventures, dropped out without comment.
Cohen, who has been planning to redevelop the former Carefree Theatre site on South Dixie Highway, had been talking to Mayor Jeri Muoio for three years about wanting to develop the tent site, he said.
Cohen Brothers Realty Corp. has developed major projects from New York to California, often with the famous Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, and many with integrated transportation hubs of the kind West Palm envisions. Cesar Pelli is former dean of the Yale School of Architecture and has designed signature buildings around the world, including the Petronas Towers in Malaysia in 1998, then the tallest buildings in the world. His son, name partner Raphael Pelli, attended the presentation Monday afternoon.
Monday’s competitors did not present designs, as they were
there primarily to sell the city on their qualifications. Cohen said he would meet with city officials to determine plans for the site and then translate those desires into a building that made financial sense.
“We absolutely have the financial capabilities,” he said, standing in front of a team of a dozen men in suits and a woman. He has never not completed a project, he added.
Palm Beach billionaire Greene drew criticism from the mayor for projects the city approved but which he has not built. Those include micro-apartments he was going to build on Banyan Boulevard downtown but decided they didn’t make financial sense, and the $250 million One West Palm towers, which won approval more than a year ago, which he has said is pending negotiations with a construction company.
Greene didn’t attend the session. But the mayor addressed his representative, West Palm land planner Jon Schmidt. “There’s a lot in the pipeline we haven’t seen,” she said. “How can we be assured of this happening?”
Schmidt responded that the team would be fine with including enforceable performance thresholds in its proposal.
Greene last week filed candidacy papers for the governor’s race. On Cohen’s team, meanwhile, sitting in the front row of the auditorium, was former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, who also is considered a likely candidate for governor. That drew levity from the mayor and commissioners.
“Are you running for governor?” Commissioner Paula Ryan asked Cohen.
“I’m running from governor,” he said.
City officials have said the tent site is critical to their efforts to provide Class A office space to attract companies to the city. But the city has entertained proposals for the site at least three times and each time the result proved an embarrassment.
In one high-profile debacle, the city gave Digital Domain Media Group approval to build a splashy building on the site to house a film school and digital animation studio and promised $35 million in subsidies. But Port St. Lucie-based Digital Domain filed for bankruptcy court protection in 2012.
The city got the land back through the courts.
Three years ago, amid political opposition, the city commission rejected a plan by developer Michael McCloskey to buy the site for $13.5 million and build a medical campus. That plan’s rejection came after two years of development negotiations.