The Wellington Village Council last month approved a step toward allowing 25 luxury homes in the Islepointe project at the village’s southern end without sidewalk connections to the rest of the community, signaling a possible retreat from long-running village standards.
The council acted on Tuesday, April 22 while looking down the barrel of what seemed to one commenting resident a “threat” — the applicant’s potential invocation of the state’s Live Local Act to build perhaps 200 apartments at the site.
The council chose to move the project along even after hearing Village Engineer Jonathan Reinsvold offer an alternative to developers’ assertions that a walkway simply would not work. Reinsvold said a boardwalk could be built over a canal bank for $1.5 million to connect with the rest of Wellington.
It became clear during the meeting that the issue was not merely whether a walkway was physically, environmentally or legally possible, but whether the applicant viewed it as a necessary financial concession, or consistent with its profitability goals, given its leverage with alternative forms of development.
A Live Local project is one “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like,” said Brian Seymour, an attorney with the Gunster law firm, representing applicant SIWBG2 LLC of West Palm Beach.
Not immediately clear was whether that completely removed from the table any discussion of a negotiated builder’s contribution to a walkway, possibly combined with village participation. In any event, it did not prove to be an option insisted upon by Mayor Michael Napoleone during the meeting. Once a staunch opponent of a “car-only” community, he called for those watching the meeting to be prepared to accept a least-bad alternative.
“The challenge we have up here is saying, ‘Do we continue to push down the road a project we don’t really like, in fear we may get something we hate,’” Napoleone said. “You have to balance those two competing interests.”
The council voted 5-0 to change zoning at the project from equestrian commercial to residential at the request of the applicant. The 10-acre parcel sits northeast of 50th Street South and 120th Avenue South.
A second and final reading on zoning changes could come before the council in June.
It is not the final word on the matter, but it marked a dramatic change in tone from a year earlier.
“I don’t want to approve a car-only community,” Napoleone said at a May 28 meeting last year.
The applicant subsequently withdrew the project for more than 10 months.
After studying it in the interim, developers decided a walkway did not make sense to them for a variety of reasons, Seymour said.
A major alternative, Seymour made clear to all assembled, is building residences under the state’s Live Local Act, passed in 2023. It preempts local regulations for certain multi-family and mixed-use affordable housing on qualifying properties. That would essentially remove Wellington from regulating the project.
That could mean, perhaps, 200 residential units in three-story buildings with a drive-through restaurant, Seymour said. The apartments alone would generate about 2,000 vehicle trips a day, while single-family homes would involve far fewer trips, perhaps 250, his group noted.
The property was initially zoned for an equestrian center, involving commercial uses that never came to fruition. That left it on a kind of island surrounded mostly by residential communities, largely walled off by a big landscape berm, with horse activity across the road to its west. It is known legally as Pod O in the Orange Point Planned Unit Development.
The plan from a year ago to put 27 single-family homes on the property has been scaled back slightly to 25 two-story homes, said agent Jerrod Purser of WGI. A primary road access point on the property’s southern end has moved slightly westward as well.
Not all neighbors and other residents said they felt comfortable with the way this has played out.
“The whole Live Local thing sounds like a little bit of a threat,” equestrian Maureen Brennan said during time for public comment.
Brennan said she was not otherwise hearing a whole lot that is different since the matter last came up.
“What seems to have not changed from the last time I heard this in this room was the sidewalk issue,” Brennan said.
Others expressed a range of opinions. Michael Mishkin said many people living nearby await details on the site plan, though the land-use change itself was not necessarily a sticking point.
Jamie Freeman said she found it “premature” to proceed.
Bryan Solomon said with other homes being approved nearby, such as a 42-home Pulte development along 120th Avenue South, “It just seems like so much so soon.”
In response to a question from Councilman John McGovern, Solomon said he would rather see the zoning remain commercial.
Connectivity not just by car has long been a signature feature of how Wellington defines itself.
Napoleone himself posited that the project seemed to fall short of goals in the village’s comprehensive plan to foster paths for bicyclists, pedestrians and others.
“Walk me through why I shouldn’t be concerned about that,” Napoleone said.
After nearly a year of studies, Seymour said his team concluded that a connected pathway is not a viable option. “I can’t do what can’t be done,” he said.
Seymour said what his team is proposing instead results in thousands of fewer car trips compared to other options left in place without a council-approved change. No one will be stranded, he said.
“There aren’t going to be people who don’t have vehicles living in 6,000-square-foot homes,” Seymour said.
After discussions with the Palm Beach County School District, the applicants said they believe a bus stop can be arranged for any students who need that.
Builders could stick with the current zoning permissions and build commercial, or Live Local options that won’t produce a connected path either, he said.
Council members asked Reinsvold if he agreed with the applicant’s claim that a walking path would not work.
“It contradicts what the [project’s] engineer told me,” Reinsvold said.
Reinsvold said he was addressing the question of whether a walking path is “feasible.”
A raised boardwalk along a canal bank could be achieved at a total cost of about $2 million, counting the boardwalk itself and other portions of the connecting path, he said.
Arguing against that option, Seymour said driving posts into the canal could cause vibrations that adversely affect neighboring homes, hinder water flow, and possibly produce walkways for students that were not safe by state standards.
Reinsvold said driving piles is common in many village projects and could be assessed by a specialized engineer, and as for water flow, “The velocity in that canal is very low. It wouldn’t affect it at all.”
Council members called for evidence to back up the applicant’s claim that such a walkway would violate state statutes relating to the safety of school children. That matter did not appear to reach a definitive resolution at the meeting.
At least one council member expressed a desire to see the sidewalk issue addressed.
“I definitely am pretty strong on the sidewalk,” Councilwoman Amanda Silvestri said. “If that isn’t the way you can do it, we have to figure out something so it’s connective.”
The builders pledged meetings with her and others, but they gave no indications of willingness to contribute to a walkway.
The debate comes as Wellington is coming into money that could be applied to civic purposes such as walkability, from a $9.4 million code enforcement settlement officials want to apply to green spaces, and an $11 million land sale near the Mall at Wellington Green.
One question is how willing Wellington might be to apply some of that money toward a walking path at Islepointe if the developer contributed something to the effort. If the applicant held firm to a position of contributing nothing, that could leave the village with the awkward decision to pay for everything for the walkway, to the presumed benefit of a developer’s bottom line, or do nothing.
What changed in a year? Sidewalks certainly appeared to get nudged toward the sidelines because of a new twist that dominated the meeting.
“Live Local,” Napoleone said. “It’s not a threat. It’s reality because it could happen.”
