The Palm Beach County Commission last week approved county staff’s recommendation to notify the South Florida Water Management District that it intends to execute its option to repurchase an easement of land that will be the realignment of the Seminole Pratt Whitney Road extension to the Beeline Highway.
Exercising the option is part of an effort to address growth in the area, County Engineer George Webb said at the March 22 meeting.
The repurchase of 98.55 acres for $1,379,840 will restore a previously owned right of way along the south and east edges of the 1,896-acre Mecca Farms property that the county sold to the SFWMD in 2013 for $26 million. Most of the Mecca Farms land is planned for water retention.
Webb said that the repurchase option was part of the SFWMD agreement.
“The item before you today notifies by letter the South Florida Water Management District that we intend to exercise that repurchase,” Webb said. “We then have 180 days to close on that action. It is fully my intent to bring back another item sometime within that 180 days to finalize and give additional direction, as there are developments and other things happening as far as [growth] in this area that may preclude us moving forward, but right now, we need to retain our rights to this.”
During public comment, Acreage resident Alex Larson said that the extension was no longer necessary because Pratt & Whitney had significantly reduced its operations there. Commissioner Hal Valeche said that the commission may not actually exercise the option, but he still favored the idea because he had information that the Pratt & Whitney site was experiencing a comeback.
“I know George is working on some other things,” Valeche said. “The money is not spent yet. I don’t think you want to talk about what the other alternative is, but Pratt & Whitney is coming back to Palm Beach County. I know because it’s in my district. They are increasing employment there. They are moving people back from Connecticut; and Sikorski, which was just purchased by Lockheed, is expanding as well, so don’t say there’s no jobs out on the Beeline.”
Commissioner Steven Abrams made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation, which carried 7-0.
The county purchased the Mecca Farms property originally in 2004 for development of the Scripps Research Institute campus, and invested more than $150 million into the land, including the purchase, development and running water utilities to the site. However, as the result of a legal challenge by environmentalists, the Scripps location was moved to Jupiter.
The Mecca Farms site will also have a shooting range on 150 acres operated by the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, which oversees the nearby J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area.
The shooting range, which was traded to Corbett in exchange for an SFWMD utility easement, will be near the Corbett Youth Camp and will be accessed by the same road.
The SFWMD plans to build a water storage and treatment area at Mecca Farms that will help restore flow to the Loxahatchee River. The original Seminole Pratt right of way intersected plans to connect Corbett and the Mecca Farms property. That right of way also had connection issues related to the railroad track running along the Beeline, which made the plan excessively expensive.
