Stet NewsGood morning to everyone, especially the teachers getting their classrooms ready for Monday. For you today, building higher on North Flagler; burgers and fries in North Palm Beach’s future; meet your neighbor, the Max Planck brainiac; and a new mural in Lake Worth Beach.
🏗️ Builder sinks cash into site for second Alba tower
Another developer is pursuing a high-rise to cash in on the boom in residential real estate along West Palm’s North Flagler Drive waterfront.
What’s happening: The developer of Alba, a 55-unit, 21-story high rise under construction at the site of the former Scuba Club at 4708 N. Flagler Drive, is assembling more waterfront land immediately to the north for Alba Reserve.
Plans have not yet gone to the city.
But Alba developer Kenneth Baboun of BGI Cos. has pitched a 400-foot-tall tower with a seven-story parking garage to neighbors.
“This height is not appropriate for our historic residential neighborhood,” the Northwood Harbor Association said in an email to members. Residents already are upset over disruption from Alba construction and worried about the trend along North Flagler with developers converting narrow waterfront lots into high-rise residential towers.
Why it’s important: Alba Reserve would further that trend.
On a single day in July 2023, Baboun’s company bought five of 16 condos at 4800 N. Flagler. His company paid $7.5 million in those five transactions, an average of $1.5 million per unit.
But he doesn’t yet own all the land he’ll need for Alba Reserve.
Separating those condos from the Scuba Club site is a home on less than an acre owned by landscaper Justo Naranjo and his wife, Beatriz Corrales.
And Naranjo and Corrales beat Baboun to the other 11 condos in the four two-story buildings north of their home at 4800 N. Flagler.
They bought earlier and paid far less, about $217,000 per condo, property records reveal.
They amassed them between August 2018 and October 2020, before Baboun’s plans for the Scuba Club had emerged.
Baboun didn’t get waivers from the West Palm Beach City Commission to allow Alba on the 1.7-acre Scuba Club site until January 2022. City planners later conceded they should have been limited to 44 units.
What they’re saying: Plans for Alba Reserve are underway but designs are not yet final, an Alba spokeswoman said.
“The team at Alba and BGI Companies believe in the growth of the Northwood neighborhood and as such, are continuing to invest in the area,” Baboun said in a statement. “We are currently designing the tower and working closely with the city of West Palm Beach and the Northwood Harbor Association to prepare for submitting plans by the end of the year.”
If the city greenlights the project, that would mean a big payday for Naranjo and Corrales.
They invested $4 million, including $1.6 million for their 7,500-square-foot home, but could sell for more than $40 million.
Naranjo, a son of Cuban immigrants raised in a low-income neighborhood in Palm Beach County, is reluctant to jinx the deal by talking about it.
“I’m looking forward to the negotiations coming up in the future to make this happen,” he told Stet News. “I don’t want to cry victory and then nothing happens.”
🍔 Healthy choice gives way
Keep the greens on the golf course and give us steak and potatoes.
So say the golfers at the North Palm Beach Country Club, where members are eschewing the healthy fare offered by the signature restaurant there, The Farmer’s Table.
Why it’s important: The North Palm Beach Village Council votes Thursdayon a new food and beverage operator for the club after hearing from members that while good, the farm-to-table menu isn’t to their liking.
After a competition involving four vendors, a selection committee held a tasting with two finalists and picked Lessing’s Hospitality Group, the family-owned company that works with football great Joe Namath at the Jupiter Love Street restaurants Lucky Shuck, Beacon and Topsider.
What’s at stake: Lessing’s would operate two restaurants with more than 200 seats and a 445-capacity banquet room at the clubhouse, which overlooks the village’s recently redesigned Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course.
- First-year sales are projected at $6.5 million, with a total capital commitment of $1.2 million. Lessing’s would give the village $200,000 to cover the costs of previous investments in the clubhouse, which is on U.S. 1 south of PGA Boulevard.
- Lessing’s would pay $200,000 per year, with annual 3% increases plus a share of sales.
For the full story from veteran food reporter Jan Norris, click here.
🔬 In search of discovery
Twenty years after Palm Beach County invested hundreds of millions into biotech, discovery is ongoing in Jupiter.
Why it matters: Lin Tian, a China-born U.S. researcher at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, has landed an $11 million, five-year grant to pursue brain research with four academic institutions, including Stanford University and the Allen Institute in Seattle.
She has her sights set on nothing less than groundbreaking discoveries, as she explained to Stet News in an interview last month.
It colored her decision to collaborate with other academic institutions.
What she’s saying: “I’m thinking, ‘how can we leverage as a resource to make a big difference?’ The only way to do that is to collaborate … and then make a big discovery.”
She explained why recent studies and new techniques have helped explain some of the shortcomings of anti-depressants, such as Prozac.
“We have, actually, really interesting findings about why this drug does not work very well,” she said. “Because we can monitor serotonin now.”
Catch up quick: And she explained why she uprooted her family last fall to move from Southern California to head the Molecular Biotechnology for Neural Dynamics and Therapeutics lab at Max Planck, the German institution that opened its first U.S. center in Jupiter’s Abacoa in 2008.
“The philosophy is that, well, first of all, you need to be fearless,” something she found more difficult in a public university setting because of her teaching responsibilities.
“Without risk, it’s really hard to have a transformative discovery, especially with developing technology. So Max Planck, their philosophy is that, to tackle the most challenging questions, they really encourage your high-risk, high-reward research.”
Click here to read the rest of the story.
🍊 The juice
🇺🇸 The recently promoted acting director of the U.S. Secret Service,Ronald Rowe, spent four years at the West Palm Beach Police Department in the 1990s. (The Palm Beach Post $$$)
💰 Of the 32 cities in Florida where Zillow finds the typical home to be worth more than $1 million, six are in Palm Beach County: Manalapan, Jupiter Inlet Colony, Golf, Gulf Stream, Palm Beach and Ocean Ridge. Jupiter Island in Martin County leads the list with a typical value of nearly $10 million. (Florida Trend)
🕯️ Lt. William Calley, the lone American convicted in the murder of hundreds of unarmed, unresisting Vietnamese civilians in the atrocity known as the My Lai Massacre, died on April 28 in Gainesville at age 80. Born in Miami, he enrolled in Palm Beach Junior College, as it was known at the time, but quit after a semester with failing grades. (The New York Times gift link)
🎶 Superstar soprano Anna Netrebko, shunned in the U.S. over her support of Putin, will sing at a gala for Palm Beach Opera. (The New York Times – gift link)
🚨 “Under the Radar,” a documentary from Viaplay showing on Amazon Prime, asks whether a Swedish serial killer is responsible for the 2007 Boca Mall slaying of Randi Gorenberg. (The Palm Beach Post $$$)
🏈 Suncoast High School graduate Devin Hester delivers an emotional Hall of Fame speech filled with tributes to family, coaches. (ChicagoBears.com)
🌎 561 insider: Rebirth at the Cultural Council
A mural by a modern-day DaVinci of street-painting, depicting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is gone from the landscape of Lake Worth Beach, the victim of an aging building and an artist’s success.
When the Palm Beach County Cultural Council reached out to internationally renowned artist Eduardo Kobra to see if he would repaint his 2017 tribute to MLK, the artist sought several “hundred thousand dollars,” far more than the tourist-tax supported council could pay, council President Dave Lawrence said.
Lawrence said leaks caused by cracks in the building’s exterior at 601 Lake Ave. had to be repaired to avoid damaging artwork displayed within.
“I have a trash can sitting up in my window that I have to empty when it rains because of the water coming in,” he said.
What’s next: In its place, the council has allotted $40,000 to West Palm Beach artist Craig McInnis for a mural depicting a circle of people framed by flower petals.
“I’m completely honored to follow an artist like Kobra and be on such an iconic wall,’’ McInnis said. “To me, it’s like opening for the Rolling Stones.”
ByJoeCapozzi.com tells the full story here.
🤗 We’re grateful for all the kind notes you sent after our new website launched last week. And so proud! A special Stet thank you to Elizabeth Capozzi, who built the site with you in mind. And to Zach Levine, who handled the digital switch to our new home.
💐 Finally, a hearty Stet hello to our new correspondent, Jan Norris, a journalist who has covered the South Florida dining scene for 30-plus years. (She knows where the bones and onion peels are buried.) She’s a Florida native, remembers the state pre-Disney, and travels frequently to visit family and friends from the Keys to the Panhandle. Welcome, Jan!
➡️ Do you have a comment or a story idea? Write to us at stet@stetnews.org.
