‘Changing the face of Palm Beach County’: GL Homes details plans ahead of key land-swap vote

A measure of Palm Beach County’s potential growth comes Tuesday when county commissioners are expected to take a final vote on a land swap, which includes allowing 1,000 new homes to move forward in a region known as the Agricultural Reserve.

The proposal has taken years to take shape. It has drawn both supporters, who back the new housing, amenities and benefits offered, and opponents, such as the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations, which mounted a “Preserve the Reserve!” campaign.

In May, county commissioners voted 5-2 in favor of the plan after 80 people came forward during public comment to express both support and dissent. On Friday, the Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group, which is against the proposal, issued a call to action, urging people to attend Tuesday’s meeting.

The plan proposes to take land that GL Homes, one of the state’s largest developers, owns in the northern part of the county, called Indian Trail Groves, and swap it for land in the county’s Agricultural Reserve. GL Homes would then use the acquired Ag Reserve land to offer 1,000 single-family, age-restricted homes, 277 workforce-housing units, 800 acres for a water reservoir, a 200-acre family park, 800 acres of farmland, 25 acres for a park in West Boca, 4 acres for a Chabad synagogue, 4 acres for the Jewish Family Services/Jewish Association for Residential Care and 8 acres for a Torah Academy school campus.

The Ag Reserve is more than 20,000 acres of land created with the purpose of preserving farmland and wetlands to promote and enhance agricultural activity, water resources and open space. This is done by limiting the preserve’s uses to agriculture, conservation, low-density residential development and non-residential uses.

In a recent interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the president of GL Homes, Misha Ezratti, discussed the company’s goals within the county, how the land-swap proposal first emerged years ago, the benefits being offered and what the next steps would be, depending on whether the plan is approved. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: A GL Homes representative at a recent meeting called the proposed land swap involving the Ag Reserve a “massive undertaking.” Can you describe roughly how long ago the idea came up to swap land, and what are some of the most notable steps that GL Homes has taken, through the years, to try to make this plan a reality?

A: “In 2019, there was a water resource task force meeting, several meetings actually, and our property was identified as a key missing link in three separate alternative proposals that the county wanted to present to the South Florida Water Management District. The goal of the South Florida Water Management District was to get cleaner water up to the Loxahatchee River in the north, but the county stopped and said, ‘You’re not providing enough benefits to the other parts of the county.’ There were harmful discharges going into the Lake Worth Lagoon when too much fresh water gets discharged and mixes with the salt water, it can create things like the algae blooms. And there’s also saltwater intrusion coming back in from the ocean inland, there’s red tide.”

“And so some of these contaminants were not being addressed in the Lake Worth Lagoon as well as the Grassy Waters Preserve, which is the source of drinking water for the city of West Palm Beach and the town of Palm Beach. … We listened, we heard and we created this proposal called the land swap. Even though it had some iterations before that, the most current version was created based on those 2019 water resource task forces. We now have a way to help the county, at our own expense … create this project.”

“And that’s obviously the crowning jewel of the land swap, but then it morphed into so much else. We listened to other partners and have relationships throughout the county, and there were community needs for recreation, for religious uses and for infrastructure such as workforce housing that has now become part of the overall land swap.”

Q: What has been your biggest takeaway from the process of proposing this plan? How has this process differed from prior proposals that GL Homes has pursued in recent years in Palm Beach County? 

A: “In Palm Beach County, our biggest takeaway is that we are proposing something that is tough for people to wrap their heads around because of the scope and the magnitude of it. But once people hear and understand how much community contributions are coming from GL homes to the residents of Palm Beach County, most people get on board and understand that the benefits far outweigh any of the negatives.

“We are proposing about five or six public-private partnerships, all rolled into one, while we have done many of these type of things by conveying land for schools in the past and parks like the Canyon District Park while we’ve built roads throughout the county and stepped up time and time again to support the infrastructure and community needs.

“Never has it all been under the auspices of one giant proposal, so the magnitude and scope of this is unparalleled to anything that GL Homes has ever done.”

Q: As you may be aware, there are opponents who argue swapping land inside the Ag Reserve for land outside of it could create a “dangerous precedent for other developers,” allowing for more development in the Ag Reserve. What is your response to their concerns? 

A: “Well, we look at the benefits, such as the increase to the county tax base, the net increase in agriculture, the benefits to drainage, the benefits to cleaner water, workforce housing, recreational needs with the county park in the north part of the county, for the camping and a TV park, recreational needs in the south part of the county, as well as civic and institutional uses as something that would set a new precedent and a new bar for anybody else that would come in and try to propose this to Palm Beach County.”

“And if there are other developers with enough land, enough resources, enough ingenuity to come in and propose something like this, then the county should consider it and work with them because partnerships and sometimes partnerships with private entities is how a lot of things can get done sometimes quicker than they can just with the public.

“So our water project is something that we’re already in for construction permit on with the South Florida Water Management District. That’s a reality.

“There’s other projects that are related to Everglades restoration and the Loxahatchee River restoration that have been proposed and been talked about for decades. And so that’s something that hasn’t come to fruition versus ours, we’re in for permit. We’re going to be building it over the next few years and turning it over to the county. It’s in our eyesight.

“So every one of these is something that as a private builder, we can come in and deliver such outsized benefit. And so the county should consider each one. I don’t think there’s going to be many people who have the capacity to do it, but the county should be open-minded for the future.

“You have an area in the Ag Reserve that has a large Jewish population, a lot of them needing to walk to a synagogue, and there’s no synagogues provided to them in that area. It just wasn’t contemplated in the original vision of the Ag Reserve and the master plan. You have a school tour academy in east Boca that’s bursting at the seams for growth. And they approached us saying we need land for school because a lot of our constituents and congregants, their families live out west, and they have to drive so far east.

“This area is growing, and people who are teachers, nurses, firefighters, retail workers, commercial workers, they can’t afford to live in this area. So we’re creating almost 300 units of workforce housing for people to be able to not have to commute over an hour away. And we are very proud of the fact that we’re going to be creating all this.”

Q: What will GL Homes plan to do next, based on whether the land swap is approved or not at the meeting Tuesday?

A: “If we are approved at the final adoption hearing on Tuesday, then we’ll get to work hammering out all the details of this exceptional proposal.

“The devil is in the details, and each one of these things has so much complexity that it would be too much to get into right now, but we would be first concentrating on the water project, which we’re already in for permit on, and then focusing on all the other aspects of it. And if we don’t get approved, which would be a shame, then the loss would really be for our community partners.

“GL Homes would still be able to build on our Indian Trails land, we have 3,900 units out there. We were looking for something that would help those residents by reducing traffic in that area and Indian Trails, providing them cleaner water, recreational needs, and providing major benefits to the south part of the county, including our Valencia community, which would be a huge, huge impact on the tax base and the property values and benefiting all the commercial tenants in the area as well.”

“As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats, so all the commercial out there needs rooftops to benefit a lot of small businesses out there. So those people would unfortunately suffer. And GL Homes would continue to build with our currently approved plan up in the Loxahatchee area.”

Q: If you drive across Palm Beach County, there’s no missing some of GL Homes’ newest communities, as well as the Turnpike billboard ads that call attention to the newly built homes. Did you yourself expect GL Homes to have this much of a presence in the community?

A: “We have been in Palm Beach County for over 35 years building homes. So we recognized how special the county was a long time ago. And it provides so many countywide amenities with beaches, business friendly climate, colleges, great public schools, beautiful communities, infrastructure. And we have been bullish, we consider Palm Beach County to be our home base and have for a long time. So we’ve always doubled down and tripled down on our investment within the county.”

“We feel that it is warranted because Florida in general is such a desirable place to live with over 1,200 people moving down here a day. We see that the growth of Florida and the appeal of Florida, whether from a tax perspective or business friendly perspective, our sunshine is not going away anytime soon. And so we’ve continued to buy beautiful pieces of land and create these beautiful communities.”

Q: Is there anything else you’d like people to know, whether they are in support of the land swap or against it?

A: “There’s a lot of misconceptions in the Ag Reserve. GL has been in the AG Reserve for 20-plus years. Money that was used from the bond referendum in 1999, which is always a big speaking point, was used to purchase two properties that are still owned by the county and in farming.”

“The rest of it, in order to create preservation, development has to happen. What I mean by that is for every acre that’s developed and built upon, 1.5 acres of preservation has to happen. It’s called the 60-40 rule. And so GL Homes, by building over a dozen communities in the reserve over the past 20 years has created 6,000 acres of preservation.”

“We believe that we’ve been an essential part in making the Ag Reserve what it is and contributing to that.”

“Additionally, we’re a ‘do-the-right-thing’-type of company, and we contribute a lot to the community, to charities to help ending homelessness and being very transparent. So when we say that there’s community benefits that we’re proud of, we are putting everything we have as a company into changing the face of Palm Beach County for decades and generations to come.”