Joel EngelhardtPGA Station transforming from long-abandoned focus on furniture sales to living space; two seven-story parking garages planned.
Developer Dan Catalfumo’s success in changing zoning from office to residential paid off Oct. 31 when he sold 4.6 acres in Palm Beach Gardens for $32.5 million to a company backed by Abacus Capital Group of New York, the South Florida Business Journal reported.
Abacus plans to demolish the four-story office building at PGA Station and build 620 apartments, based on changes to the site’s master plan granted to Catalfumo in February by the Palm Beach Gardens City Council.
- The apartments would be in two buildings — one with 302 units, the other with 318 — with two seven-story parking garages offering 980 spaces.
Catalfumo bought the office building site in 2022 for $18 million. One of his companies also paid $5 million to another one of his companies to assemble the property, which extends from RCA Center Drive to RCA Boulevard just south of Design Center Drive.
The city previously approved Catalfumo’s plans for The Marc, a 396-unit apartment building next door that opened in September. Catalfumo sold that site for $20.5 million in December 2021 to The Richman Group, which built The Marc.
Why it’s important: The two projects will give PGA Station more than 1,000 apartments next to the city’s proposed Tri-Rail station. The developer gets added density for building near the proposed station but there are no trains stopping there yet. The county has not yet found a source of money to pay for commuter rail along the Florida East Coast Railway tracks.
Catch-up quick: Catalfumo took ownership of the overall 37-acre property, which he dubbed PGA Design Center, during the MacArthur Foundation’s 1999 liquidation sale. He lost it to foreclosure after the 2008 real estate bust.
- In April 2019, Catalfumo teamed with Bob Rawe to pay $17 million to buy three of the lost properties at the Design Center from BBX Capital Asset Management, the same lender that won a $44 million foreclosure judgment against Catalfumo eight years earlier.
- He renamed it PGA Station and reoriented it toward apartments.
Catalfumo also won city approval for an office building on the east side of the site. He sold that property for $17.5 million in 2022 to White Diamond Tower LLC, whose Blue Diamond Towers LLC owns the twin office buildings with the cones on top at PGA Boulevard and Alternate A1A.
