Gardens slams brakes on county’s Avenir road proposal

Palm Beach Gardens objects to extension of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road through Avenir, urging county to stick to plans for separate road.

A city’s support for roadway connections crashed head-on into a burgeoning community’s fear of traffic Thursday night at the Palm Beach Gardens City Council meeting.

The council, known to champion connectivity and mobility, unanimously voted against a surprise county proposal to run the extension of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road through Avenir, a community rising along western Northlake Boulevard with nearly 4,000 homes, most selling for more than $1 million.

County Engineer David Ricks, who attended the meeting after Palm Beach Gardens alerted residents to the issue through an email blast, appeared ready after the meeting to drop the connection that he had presented in December at a meeting with Ibis residents.

That proposal would have steered Seminole Pratt Whitney Road traffic onto a two-lane Avenir neighborhood road. 

While Palm Beach Gardens officials typically champion roadway connections, this one threatened to flood a neighborhood street with heavy traffic and contradicted a long-held county commitment to run a separate Seminole extension along the western edge of Avenir to the Beeline Highway without any access at all to the high-end community.

Ricks said after the meeting that the county had not abandoned the separate road but merely saw an opportunity to link it to Avenir Drive, which dead-ends at a point next to the new county road.

“The historically shown connection at Avenir Drive is necessary for critical life safety issues and provides an alternative for times of extreme traffic congestion on Northlake Boulevard,” County Administrator Verdenia Baker wrote in a letter Ricks delivered to the council.

“Since the city’s master plan clearly shows this connection with a westward arrow from Avenir Drive, the county planned accordingly; however, if there was a change in direction, the county requests that the city provide documentation confirming a mutual understanding of that change,” Baker wrote.

The letter pointed to the city’s long-held commitment to congestion relief. It did not mention the lawsuit coloring city-county relations since 2021 over city efforts to control developer impact fees to pay for mobility alternatives. 

Long delays in county efforts to widen the often-congested Northlake Boulevard, documented in the city’s presentation Thursday, raised fears that the county could build one segment of the Seminole Pratt Whitney Road extension to connect to Avenir Drive without building the rest of the road to the Beeline Highway.

That would flood Avenir Drive, which parallels Northlake, with traffic it was not designed to handle, city officials said.

Ultimately, Avenir Drive connects with north-south Coconut Boulevard before extending north to the Beeline Highway. The still-unbuilt northern half of the Coconut extension would run through Avenir’s extensive natural area. 

The county’s Seminole Pratt Whitney Road extension would run north of Northlake and then east through the former Mecca Farms property, where it could connect with Avenir Drive. The next segment would run north along the C-18 Canal, connecting with Coconut before crossing the CSX Railway tracks and reaching the Beeline Highway.

‘It’s not golf carts’

But linking the Seminole extension to Avenir Drive would dump major truck traffic into a quiet residential community, an unacceptable outcome, council members said.

“We know what kind of traffic is on Seminole Pratt. And it’s not golf carts. It’s not smaller vehicles. It’s not children on bicycles,” Council Member Carl Woods said. “So to blend diesel trucks, dump trucks, cement trucks, work vehicles, dualies (1-ton pickups), into a community that is going to have children and that kind of stuff, it just doesn’t sit right.”

Rosa Schechter, one of the Avenir partners whose $30 million purchase of the 4,700-acre Vavrus Ranch in 2012 blossomed into a project worth hundreds of millions, thanked the council for its support.

“Avenir Drive is a neighborhood drive. That’s why we called it a drive,” she said. “We meant it to be a meandering roadway, where people could walk, ride their bikes and drive their golf carts. It was never meant to be a throughway.”

County commissioner agrees

County Commissioner Sara Baxter, who represents The Acreage, agreed with the city’s support for the Seminole extension.

“Surprisingly enough I am in support of your resolution,” she told the council. “I believe the residents of The Acreage and Loxahatchee wouldn’t want to have to drive through Avenir.”

However, while she supported the city’s position, the city’s stance irked Rebecca McKeich, who opposed the city’s decision to allow an ice-rink complex in a residential neighborhood behind Palm Beach Gardens High School.

“I think it would be remiss if someone didn’t call out the blatant hypocrisy of the city, this manager, staff (and) council showing this much concern about the potential traffic issues regarding wealthy Avenir transplants while blowing off the concerns of the less affluent residents of our oldest Palm Beach Gardens neighborhoods,” McKeich said.

The fracas drew attention to how long it is taking the county to widen Northlake. A six-lane section, built by Avenir, is done but the next segment, from Coconut to Hall Boulevard, remains at two lanes, with work to widen it to four lanes expected to be completed in 2029. 

“Northlake Boulevard, I a-hundred percent agree, is giving so many people heartburn,” Council Member Marcie Tinsley said. 

She urged the county to make it six lanes now instead of waiting. “That would be an exponential relief to relieving traffic,” she said.

Note: Tinsley is the only incumbent on the Gardens’ March 11 ballot. She is facing Scott Gilow. Woods’ nearly nine-year tenure on the council ends after the election. Chuck Millar is running against John Kemp for Woods’ seat. For more about the candidates, click here.