The Indian Trail Improvement District Board of Supervisors agreed last week to send a letter of support to Palm Beach County for a proposal by GL Homes that would transfer a substantial portion of its Indian Trails Grove development to the county’s Agricultural Reserve area.
The proposal would reduce the scope of GL Homes’ development west of The Acreage and instead allow denser development on land the company owns in the county’s southwestern Ag Reserve.
At the May 17 meeting, GL Homes Vice President Kevin Ratterree said his company is planning to make a proposal to Palm Beach County that would make a substantial change to the Indian Trails Grove plan.
Indian Trails Grove has its land use in place, which was approved by the county last year. Indian Trails Grove was in the process of rezoning, while Iota Carol — which is almost completely surrounded by the GL Homes land — was in the process of doing both land use changes and rezoning simultaneously. However, Iota Carol was rejected by the Palm Beach County Commission last month.
“We withdrew the zoning application soon after because we no longer needed to stay in line relative to what Iota Carol was doing, so as of now, there is no active zoning petition on Indian Trails Grove,” Ratterree said. “We are going to be making this proposal to the county. We are requesting you, as a board, stand by us and support the concept that we will be presenting to the county.”
GL Homes plans to submit its application in July or August. The first public hearing will be before the Planning Commission in December. The Palm Beach County Commission’s transmittal hearing will be in January 2018.
“The term I’m going to use tonight is ‘Agricultural Reserve expansion.’ Don’t get married to the term. It is just a term. The idea is a concept and a proposal that is going to be presented to the county,” Ratterree said.
The application will ask to transfer planned units at the Indian Trails Grove property to the Agricultural Reserve and utilize the land west of The Acreage as preservation land for the developments occurring in the Agricultural Reserve area.
“In order for you to fully understand the proposal, I have to spend a little bit of time explaining how the Agricultural Reserve works, because it functionally sets up the proposal that’s being made to the county,” he said.
The Ag Reserve is about 21,000 acres generally encompassing the area between Clint Moore Road in Boca Raton to the south, Florida’s Turnpike to the east, the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge to the west and Hypoluxo Road to the north.
In the late 1990s, the county went through a master planning process for the Ag Reserve area to preserve and enhance agricultural activity and environmental/water resources.
“What we want you to understand as we go through this proposal is that the Indian Trails Grove property becomes an extension of the Agricultural Reserve area,” Ratterree said.
Voters approved a bond in 1999 for the county to use $150 million to buy land in the Ag Reserve, as well as environmentally sensitive land either in the reserve area or elsewhere in Palm Beach County.
It bought about 2,530 acres for $106 million, with the remaining $44 million used by the county to buy property outside the Ag Reserve for preservation, primarily in the northern end of the county, Ratterree explained. The county then sold part of the land for $22 million.
“At the end of the day, what the public purchased in the Ag Reserve through the bond was 2,355 acres with a net of $84 million,” he said. “That is relevant to our conversation here, because one of the first things you hear when people talk about the Agricultural Reserve area is that the county bought all 21,000 acres of land. No, the county bought 2,355 acres net for $84 million. The rest of the story of the Agricultural Reserve has been implemented by private property interests, GL Homes being the principal developer of a lot of the communities down there.”
The rest of the property in the Ag Reserve was left for private interests to develop, he said, adding that developers were restricted as to what percentage of their property they could build on, and had to leave the remaining portion to preservation.
As an example, he said a 60-40 development would have to preserve 1.5 acres for every acre built on.
“If we wanted to build on 100 acres in this scenario, we would need 150 acres of preservation,” Ratterree said. “The density of that development is based on one unit per acre on the gross acreage, so in this particular example, it’s 250 acres. At one unit per acre, that will allow 150 units on the preserve. That will allow 150 units on the preserve piece and 100 units on the development piece.”
Developments in the Ag Reserve follow similar ratios, he said, adding that GL Homes projects have preserved more than 5,500 acres in the Ag Reserve. While the county purchased over 2,300 acres for preservation, private developers have dedicated almost 12,000 acres, he said.
“Why are we here and what does this mean to the Indian Trails Grove property?” he asked. “The concept is that we want you to create the ability for Indian Trails Grove to transfer the unit rights granted under the land use potential down to the Agricultural Reserve area and to utilize Indian Trails Grove as the preservation for the 60 percent or 80 percent of the developments that are occurring… down there.”
Ratterree noted that 3,897 units is the land use potential granted by the county, but GL Homes would like to transfer some of those development rights to properties it owns in the Ag Reserve.
“For those who doubt that this piece of property is actively used for agriculture, we spent millions of dollars converting this property from a defunct citrus grove to active agricultural row crops,” he said.
Ratterree explained that GL Homes has three properties in the Ag Reserve that it would like to build on that are actually near developed areas. This could be enabled through an agreement with the county and support of ITID.
More than 2,893 acres of the Indian Trails Grove property would go from development to preservation, he said.
“That’s the key to the proposal,” he said. “This is a phased proposal because [with] only those three properties that we own, we can’t 100 percent preserve all of Indian Trails Grove. To do those three properties, 2,893 acres of Indian Trails Grove goes to preservation, and 2,315 of those 3,897 units now come off of that land and go out to the three properties in the Agricultural Reserve area. That is a substantial reduction in the development footprint proposed for Indian Trails Grove.”
It would mean a reduction of units down from 3,897 to 1,582, he said. Because the northern portion of the property will no longer be developed, there will no longer be a need to develop 190th Avenue, Ratterree added.
He added that as land becomes available to GL Homes in the Ag Reserve, it could repeat the transfer of development rights process.
“For now, what that does mean is that we see our western communities residential development go from 4,872 acres down to 1,979 acres,” he said.
Supervisor Betty Argue made a motion to write a letter of support for the GL Homes proposal to the county, subject to legal fees being reimbursed, which carried 5-0.
