A seismic 4-1 vote in initial support from the Wellington Village Council on Thursday, Nov. 16 sets up a final decision in January or February for the area’s most consequential equestrian development plan in decades.
Talks continue over key conditions to see if Wellington Lifestyle Partners can keep a crucial four yes votes for what it wants to do: consolidate and expand the horse showgrounds, as well as build 210 homes and a commercial “main street” with a hotel and shops. The proceedings triggered withering blasts from opponents, including one who called it “an astonishing betrayal.”
Councilman John McGovern said he won’t hesitate to vote no on second reading without “bullet-proof” guarantees that the developers will live up to their promises.
“I’m not ready to end this process tonight,” he said. “We need to make this better.”
Vice Mayor Michael Napoleone provided the lone dissenting vote on critical parts of the plan.
Under Wellington’s rules, the team working with equestrian businessman Mark Bellissimo needs to keep every one of those four votes to remove 96 acres from the village’s Equestrian Preserve Area, the first time in village history such a change has been made.
“Much of the opposition focuses on one person, fairly or unfairly, and that has been Mark Bellissimo,” said Doug McMahon, CEO and managing partner of Wellington Lifestyle Partners, the development group behind the current plans. “Has he made some mistakes? Sure. I think we all do. But tonight, I want to give him credit for caring enough about Wellington and its future to find a development company and an executive to take over and execute with thoroughness and precision.”
McMahon’s group maintains that the reclassification of the preserve land north of Pierson Road is reasonable and necessary to keep Wellington riding high in the saddle of the global horse world. Foes disagree, claiming it will open the door to future landowners or developers who might find it profitable to chip off more chunks of the preserve, thwarting a designation that severely restricts what can be built there.
“The village council’s vote was an astonishing betrayal of their duty to Wellington’s equestrian community and against the clearly asserted will of a supermajority (greater than 80 percent) of all community residents, equestrians and non-equestrians alike,” said a statement from attorney Len Feiwus, representing neighbors opposed to the plan, including residents of Equestrian Club Estates. “We are not done. We will continue to fight Bellissimo’s development plan at every stage.”
In hopes of keeping any votes from peeling off, Wellington Lifestyle Partners has dangled what is now clarified as a 59-acre public park north of Forest Hill Blvd. One council member referred to it as a potential New York-style Central Park for the village.
Another key negotiating point concerns the wording of an agreement not to build homes on part of the project known as Wellington North until a consolidated showgrounds incorporating dressage with hunters and jumpers is up and running. Dressage currently operates at a separate location at what would become Wellington North.
The deadline for showgrounds improvements, initially proposed by the end of 2028, sits at the end of 2030 under the latest written proposal from the applicant as of Nov. 28, according to Wellington’s Planning, Zoning & Building Director Tim Stillings.
There has been discussion of the 96 acres reverting back to the preserve, if the showgrounds expansion fails to materialize as stipulated. As things stand now, such a reversion would not happen automatically and would require a vote from a future council to put the land back into the preserve, Stillings said.
At the Nov. 16 meeting, Councilman Michael Drahos asked for and received a verbal assurance from developers that the village will get a full 59 acres for a potential public park north of Forest Hill Blvd. near its intersection with South Shore Blvd. The initial offer as a gift to the village had been 50 acres, a surprise sweetener late in the game.
Parting with only 50 acres would be like giving someone a box of chocolates after eating a few, Drahos said, referring to the unused former golf course land.
“You get the full box of chocolates, 59 acres,” McMahon said.
This particular box of chocolates has been arranged on something like layaway, through a proposed land purchase that can be finalized and then given to the village. McMahon said that land near the village library came under contract last March, through Dec. 31, 2023, and can be renewed for the first quarter of 2024.
That would be important, because final village approval for the equestrian projects, if it occurs, likely will not happen before January at the earliest. With all the moving parts, staff members are preparing for the possibility that the vote will not happen until February.
If that land option was taken out in March, Napoleone wanted to know why it did not emerge as a deal sweetener until November.
“I keep calling it the ‘deus ex machina’ park, because it came out of the sky from nowhere,” Napoleone said, referring to the Latin phrase meaning “god from the machine,” a contrivance in ancient theater whereby a problem is suddenly solved by supernatural intervention.
“Wellington is 65,000 citizens and 24,000 households,” McMahon said. “We thought that was the thing to do for the totality of our application.”
McGovern asked if the village would have to pay all the cost of converting it into an accessible park.
McMahon said his group was prepared to help with possible dredging and creating a waterway, and they would contribute $1 million toward making it something the public can use.
Napoleone asked McMahon why all this was good for the equestrian community, with so much demonstrated opposition. The village’s advisory Equestrian Preserve Committee voted 7-0 against the development plan as it stood over the summer. Roughly four out of five comments in the public record from village residents, many of them self-identifying as involved in equestrian activities, expressed a negative view.
“Can you tell them, or tell me, what they’re missing about why this is good for equestrians and equestrian sport?” Napoleone asked.
McMahon said consolidation of dressage with an enhanced hunter and jumper showgrounds was the “smart and logical choice.”
Later, Napoleone questioned why the land would need to be taken out of the preserve before the details of the showgrounds expansion have been reviewed by advisory boards and the council itself. “To me, we’re putting the cart before the horse,” he said.
Paige Bellissimo Nunez, daughter of Mark Bellissimo and a principal in Wellington Lifestyle Partners, said, “It’s unequivocal we’re building the showgrounds or we’re not building houses.”
A boost for the projects came when an attorney representing the wealthy Jacobs family, owners of Deeridge Farm, adjacent to the Wellington North land, amended an oppositional stance to “cautiously neutral,” if the applicant lived up to certain conditions. One of these was building the improved showgrounds before constructing homes at Wellington North, attorney Jamie Gavigan said. He also recommended sticking to a 2028 deadline, not 2030.
Others saw it differently.
“This is not a horse-show application, just a reminder,” said Jane Cleveland, chair of the village’s Equestrian Preserve Committee. “It’s an application for a luxury golf community.”
Romain Marteau said he is a neighbor who favors the plan.
“Making sure the horse show runs well and is successful is definitely something that falls under the ‘preserving’ category,” he said.
When it came time to decide, Drahos said he knew a no vote would get him applause in the chamber, but he thought it was not worth the risk that the village’s horse shows in various disciplines would fall into decline or move away.
“I believe it’s the council’s job to save the equestrian industry from its own self-destruction,” he said, amid murmurs from the crowd.
Napoleone said he could support rules changes for the consolidation of the showgrounds, but he was not persuaded that the case had been made to take land out of the Equestrian Preserve Area. “I’m going to be a no vote on that,” he said.
In the end, all five council members voted yes on the piece of the project called Wellington South. It would allow for the consolidated showgrounds and develop 114 lots, including five farms of four or more acres and 109 of at least a half-acre in size. It sits on 270 acres near South Shore Blvd. and Lake Worth Road, east of Gene Mische Way.
Other council members besides Napoleone voted yes on the Wellington North proposal. It would host 48 single-family homes and 48 multi-family residences, mostly townhomes, on more than 100 acres near South Shore Blvd. and Pierson Road. That’s where the 96 acres would be removed from the preserve.
“I am in favor on voting yes on this tonight but continuing the conversation,” Councilwoman Tanya Siskind said.
Mayor Anne Gerwig said she wanted to “button down” the agreements, but “I will vote with the four tonight.”
McGovern reminded the crowd that governments often change positions between first and second readings on development proposals. He noted that the Palm Beach County Commission did so just recently with the GL Homes land swap plan, initially voting yes for taking land out of the Agricultural Reserve before ultimately rejecting the idea.
