Tag Archive for: apartment construction

Four Acres In Downtown Fort Lauderdale Up For Grabs, Bids To Start At $52M

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The state of Florida wants to sell a downtown office building and an off-site parking lot for more than $52 million.

The properties total 4.33 acres and includes the five-story Robert Hayes Gore State Office Building, at 201 W. Broward Blvd., and the 29,185-square-foot parking lot across the street.

David Wigoda and Lee Ann Korst, both senior VPs with the CBRE Group, will market the property on behalf of the state. They will accept sealed bids for the properties until Oct. 25 at noon.

Built in 1979, the Robert Hayes Gore building is 113,710 square feet on a 3.66-acre parcel. It houses offices for the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice; the Department of Children and Families and Adult Protected Services; the Department of Management Services; and the Bureau of Fire, Arson, and Explosives Investigations.

The properties are nearby Brightline’s Fort Lauderdale station, the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, the Museum of Discovery & Science, and the Nova Southeastern University Art Museum of Fort Lauderdale. They’re also zoned as a downtown regional activity center, which is “one of the most open zoning designations in Fort Lauderdale, CBRE added in its marketing of the properties.

 

Source: SFBJ

Palm Beach County Could Allow Thousands Of Apartment Units To Be Built In Agricultural Reserve

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Palm Beach County officials could approve a land use change that would permit more than 2,100 apartments in the Agricultural Reserve to address the lack of workforce housing in the area.

The County Planning Commission approved on April 8 the future land use change to facilitate “essential housing” in the Agricultural Reserve west of Delray Beach and Boynton Beach. The application was initiated by county staff, not a particular landowner. However, the application would apply to five specific parcels covering a combined 269 acres in the area.

The Agricultural Reserve is one of the largest markets for single-family home development in all of South Florida. The development rules encourage low density and a certain portion of land must be set aside for agriculture and open space for every acre developed. Using density of 2.5 units per acre, nearly 11,000 homes have been developed there, according to the county memo.

Given the low-density development pattern in the Agricultural Reserve, there are almost no housing opportunities for most people employed in the workforce, the county memo stated. The median sales price of a home on less than one acre in the area was $880,000, according to the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser. Less than 3% of the homes sold for under $500,000.

“Creating a higher density category with both a significant workforce housing requirement and a preserve requirement will help to address this imbalance while continuing to support the preservation objective,” the county memo stated.

The staff recommendation for the essential housing land use category is eight units per acre and a requirement to preserve 60% of the site and develop 40%. In addition, 25% of the units must be workforce housing.

That land use category would be restricted to locations fronting major roads, like Atlantic Avenue and Boynton Beach Boulevard, in close proximity to Florida’s Turnpike. Under the essential housing proposal, these five sites could be developed with a combined 2,152 units. However, that number could increase to 5,379 units if the owners of these properties are able to preserve land in other locations within the Agricultural Reserve, thus being able to build apartments on the entirety of their land within the essential housing district.

Developers such as GL Homes frequently buy land in the Agricultural Reserve for preservation in order to build home communities in other locations in the area. One of those five locations already has a pending development application.

The essential housing land use plan would need approval from the County Commission at a later date.

 

Source: SFBJ