Stet NewsWelcome back. For you today, rescue dogs pack the Kennel Club, Palm Beach County’s political shift, offices-to-apartments in Palm Beach Gardens and make way for tourist season.
🐶 Camp Rusty to the rescue
In a whirlwind spurred by last month’s tornadoes, the Palm Beach Kennel Club — its track shut down under state law when dog racing was banned — is now helping to save rescued dogs left homeless by a storm.
Catch-up quick: Twisters from Hurricane Milton destroyed the Furry Friends rescue ranch in Palm City. Owners of the racetrack offered a former kennel that boarded prized racing greyhounds to the rescue dogs — and cats.
- The Rooney family, owners of the kennel club on Belvedere Road next to Palm Beach International Airport, got wind of the devastation at the ranch, and leased Camp Rusty, a turnkey pet resort, to the Jupiter organization.
What they’re saying: “They’re saving lives,” said Furry Friends CEO, Jason Gluck. “It was fortuitous.”
While some work needs to be done at Camp Rusty to fulfill regulations for rescues, it should be open in another month, he said.
Gluck told Stet’s Jan Norris about getting an alert on his phone moments before a twister packing 140 mph winds tore up Furry Friends’ Palm City ranch, leaving 140 dogs and cats homeless.
Read the rest of the story here.
— Jan Norris
🗳 Tracking how we voted
President-elect Donald Trump lost Palm Beach County by about 5,500 votes but he still got more votes in Florida’s fourth-largest county than he did in nine states.
In fact, Trump scored more votes in the three large counties of South Florida — Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward — than he did in 27 states.
For Vice President Kamala Harris, South Florida’s three big counties delivered more votes than she received in 31 states that cast 180 electoral votes, but it wasn’t enough to win a single one of Florida’s 30 electoral votes.
Why it’s important: Since 1996, Palm Beach County has delivered at least a 95,000-vote bump for the Democratic presidential candidate but Ron DeSantis’ victory here in 2022 showed that those days are over.
- Harris won Palm Beach County by 5,544 votes.
- The last time a Democratic presidential candidate didn’t pick up at least 95,000 votes in Palm Beach County was in 1992, when Ross Perot offered a third-party choice that cut Bill Clinton’s margin in the county over George H.W. Bush to 47,500.
Palm Beach County residents gave Trump 366,686 votes. That’s more than any of these nine states: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont or Wyoming.
- Trump won five of those states, securing 16 electoral votes.
- Trump got 7,800 more votes in Palm Beach County than he did in the much more populous Broward County.
Palm Beach County gave Harris 372,230 votes. That’s more than she got in 12 states, of which she won four, for 14 electoral votes.
- They are: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
- Only 21 states cast more votes for the major party presidential candidates than the three South Florida counties combined, 2.69 million.
Democratic support remained prominent in Broward County, which gave Harris a 148,000-vote boost.
That was offset by Miami-Dade, once reliably Democratic, where Trump won by 125,000 votes.
Among other large Florida counties, Harris won Orange County (Orlando), but lost Hillsborough (Tampa), Pinellas (St. Petersburg) and Duval (Jacksonville).
Turnout: Palm Beach County voters turned out at an 84 percent clip, a higher turnout than Broward (65%) and Miami-Dade (72%).
Nationwide turnout: As of Monday, the two top candidates had received 146 million votes nationwide, still fewer than the COVID-marred 2020 race, which saw 155.5 million votes cast for the two major party candidates.
- As of Monday, Harris had gotten 10 million fewer votes than President Joe Biden received in 2020. Trump exceeded his 2020 vote total by more than 600,000.
- More than 100 million Americans of voting age did not cast a ballot.
– Joel Engelhardt
🏢 Sold: site for 620 apartments
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.
– Joel Engelhardt
🍊 The Juice
Democrats lost ground in the Florida Legislature in November’s election. The Republican supermajority grew by one to 86-34 (after Anne Gerwig’s victory, see below). The GOP retains a supermajority in the Senate, too, with 28 of the chamber’s 40 seats. (South Florida Sun Sentinel $$$)
A machine recount completed Saturday confirmed the narrow victory of former Wellington Mayor Anne Gerwig over state Rep. Katherine Waldron Friday, two days after the state booted Waldron out of its computer system. The win boosted the GOP state House majority to 86 seats. (The Palm Beach Post $$$)
President-elect Donald Trump’s victory and his pledge to round up undocumented immigrants sent stocks of private prison operators soaring. Boca Raton-based GEO Group rose last week from $14.50 a share to $25.50. That pushed the company’s value to $3.5 billion. (Fortune)
Palm Beach County hosts Eudemonia, its first elite wellness retreat, and 2,000 people from all over the country attend. (The New York Times gift link)
🌅 561NSIDER: 5 things we learned from Discover the Palm Beaches
The post-pandemic travel boom that drove double-digit growth in Palm Beach County visitors will settle into a slower pace, county leaders reported last week.
Why it matters: More than 9 million people traveled to Palm Beach County last year. Tourists help create 90,000 local jobs and pay sales taxes. They also pay a 6% bed tax that generated nearly $87 million in the last fiscal year.
What’s happening: Discover the Palm Beaches is the county’s tourism marketer. It shared plans to build on those record-breaking visits in a State of the Tourism Industry presentation Thursday to nearly 400 hoteliers, attractions czars, chamber of commerce execs and government leaders at the Kravis Center.
Here are five highlights:
1. The Palm Beaches brand reaches hundreds of thousands of people on social media – more than 400,000 through its Instagram account alone.
- Discover plans to host 150 social influencers and launch an Instagram broadcast channel next year with the goal of driving direct hotel bookings.
- 150 hours of tourism video is planned for platforms including The Palm Beaches YouTube channel.
- One new video is the agency’s first one to promote the benefits of tourism to Palm Beach County residents. See it here.
2. Discover is targeting travelers in these markets:
- Winter/spring: New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
- Summer/fall: Atlanta, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa
- International travelers (who stay longer and spend more): Toronto and Montreal, United Kingdom, Brazil, Colombia and Germany.
- Marketers also see potential to draw visitors from Dallas and Astros baseball fans from Houston.
3. Expect to hear more about new programs to certify front-line hospitality employees and residents as tourism ambassadors.
4. A new tourism information kiosk opened this fall at Palm Beach International Airport. It is one of 12 around the county.
- Watch for Discover to emphasize Palm Beach County’s abundance of parks and preserves beyond our beaches.
5. Discover surveys 4,500 likely travelers each quarter to help understand how to create interest in visiting Palm Beach County.
- Three of 10 likely travelers reported using artificial intelligence to shop for deals. The challenge for tourism staff is to understand how to get Palm Beach attractions to the top of AI results.
In an illustration of the double-edged effect of last week’s presidential election, Discover board Chair Peter Yesawich predicted television cameras will relay scenic images of the 561 around the world for the next four years.
- Later, when the audience was asked to list weaknesses that threaten Palm Beach County’s brand, the words “Trump” and “politics” appeared as concerns behind only “expensive” and “traffic.”
What’s next: Discover’s CEO Milton Segarra and the Tourism Development Council have launched a 20-year master plan under a $550,000 contract with Frisco, Texas-based consultant CSL International.
– Carolyn DiPaolo
