Nautilus developer sues Lake Park over marina lease 

Forest Development says town is stalling to renegotiate 99-year lease of waterfront land; 2021 meetings may have violated Sunshine.

The once-warm relations that spawned a multimillion-dollar partnership between Forest Development and Lake Park to rebuild the town’s underperforming waterfront have gone into a deep chill entering the new year.

First, the town revealed in a memo that it may have violated state open meeting Sunshine laws in 2021 when it selected Peter Baytarian’s Forest Development to take over 12 acres on the waterfront, raising the specter of Forest’s entire deal being declared invalid.

Then, on the Monday before New Year’s Eve, Forest sued the town, claiming it had refused to perform its obligations under the partnership by failing to zealously pursue state permission to use underwater land in the development and to obtain a state environmental permit. 

The town’s aim, Forest’s Miami-based attorney John Shubin wrote in the complaint, was to force the developer to accept new terms, “despite having enthusiastically entered into the binding contract more than two years ago.”

Everything changed, Shubin wrote, with the arrival of the new town manager, Richard Reade, in January 2025. 

“For two years … the parties worked collaboratively … and were aligned in their vision to modernize the marina,” Shubin wrote. “That all changed in January of this year when the town suddenly had a bout of seller’s remorse that coincided with the start date of its new town manager, who has ignored the town’s contractual obligations and repeatedly sought to renegotiate the deal.”

Nautilus sales top $100 million

Memos show that the town under Reade has pressed Forest to commit more space for public access and events, saying initial plans indicate Forest is not keeping its promise to provide substantial public access to the waterfront. 

The agreement has drawn criticism from a group of increasingly vocal town residents, who object to Forest’s 99-year lease on town land, including boat-trailer parking lots, at the foot of its newly opened Nautilus 220 condos at U.S. 1 and Silver Beach Road. 

The lease gives Forest the right to build a hotel, restaurant and boat storage facility and to take over the town marina. It calls for Forest to pay $300,000 a year for 10 years plus $1.2 million up front.

A real estate consultant hired in November is reporting the property could be worth $1.3 million to $1.6 million a year. The report by Walter Duke + Partners, the lawsuit and the Sunshine Law memo are scheduled for discussion at 6:30 pm Wednesday at the next Town Commission meeting.  

When the town of about 9,000 residents immediately north of Riviera Beach signed the lease, Forest owned the land bordering the money-losing marina but had not yet begun building its 24-story twin towers. 

After three years of construction, the building received its certificate of occupancy Dec. 22, in time for its 330 condos to go on the town’s tax rolls for the 2026-27 budget year. 

So far, sales have topped $100 million, county property records show, with 67 sales recorded at an average price of $1.5 million.

If that trend continues, Nautilus could produce $2 million in tax revenue for the town next year. Overall, property tax payments to countywide taxing bodies, including Palm Beach County and the school district, could top $9 million.

As an incomplete building, the site’s $6.7 million taxable value likely generated less than $35,000 for the town in 2025.

Forest is pursuing other area projects, including the Oculina towers, twin high-rise towers next to Nautilus on the south side of Silver Beach Road in Riviera Beach; and 10th & Park, a 16-story, 595-unit rental building in downtown Lake Park.

While it ranked second in November to buy Riviera Beach-owned land along Blue Heron Boulevard, Riviera Beach selected Forest to buy 2.2 acres at 1851 Broadway to build 450 apartments.  

Town pursues more open space

The town has been sharply critical of Forest’s actions, starting with its failure to plan for a sewage lift station for Nautilus. The town allowed Forest to build the lift station on town land, part of the waterfront site leased to Forest. 

The lift station space in the center of the public land leaves less room for public access to the waterfront, town officials have argued. 

Forest’s plans for a 260-room Marriott Autograph Collection hotel, a 30,000-square-foot stand-alone restaurant and a 280-boat storage facility overwhelm the site, they say. 

“The lack of planning for this utility infrastructure (the lift station) by Nautilus 220 essentially renders the ‘event lawn’ useless as adequate and accessible open space for the public,” City Attorney Tom Baird and his partner at the Jones Foster law firm, Peter Henn, wrote in an Oct. 3 memo.

The memo also questioned the size and location of the developer’s proposed marina plaza.

“It seems obvious that this ‘open space’ is not large enough to function as an entertainment venue that can accommodate ‘street festivals’ and ‘special events,’” Baird and Henn wrote.

“This area is basically the extension of the sidewalk and most of the ‘plaza’ is in the public (right of way). A public (right of way) cannot be counted toward an open-space requirement.”

They also criticized the developer for ignoring staff comments about plans for public space on the roof of the boat storage building.

“The developer apparently continues to insist that it is open space available for the public, but the developer, and more likely the hotel operator, will control any public access to this space,” they wrote.

The friction prompted comments at a Nov. 5 meeting from Town Commissioner Michael O’Rourke, a supporter of the project, who said: “One of the things that really gets me is the war that has taken place between this town and the developer.

“This town really needs to back off on the war with this developer,” he said. “We need to get this situation resolved. Because it is only hurting us.”

Town delays Cabinet appearance

In August, commissioners voted 4-1 to postpone a crucial step needed to begin development of the marina.

Forest’s leases call for the town to go before the governor and Cabinet to remove a public-use requirement on a half-acre of underwater land the state gave the town in the 1960s. 

The developer needed the right to build over those slivers of submerged land, valued at $600,000, for its restaurant and boat storage. 

Without the state’s approval, plans for the hotel, restaurant and marina cannot move forward. But after resident outcry, the commissioners postponed a Cabinet appearance set for September.

On Aug. 13, Forest notified the town that the decision to postpone the September Cabinet appearance put the town in default of its obligations under the lease.

After town officials missed a December Cabinet date and said they would aim for the next Cabinet meeting, which is in March, Forest filed its lawsuit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.

The Dec. 29 suit also cited the town’s decision to pause pursuit of an environmental permit with the state Department of Environmental Protection. 

Town staff told commissioners the delays are needed as it negotiates changes to the lease signed in August 2023. But in an October report to the commission, Town Manager Reade wrote that Forest had broken off talks.

“Staff had hoped to work with the developer through these issues during meetings and discussions,” he wrote. “However, they were very strong in their conversation that the developer did not want to negotiate against themselves and required the town to put our proposed changes in writing.

“Thus, we are proceeding with a full review of the comprehensive agreement to ensure that we have an agreement that, if agreed upon by both parties, would be more fair to the town than what is currently in place.”

Forest viewed that as an admission that the town is stalling to get better terms.

“It is now clear to Forest Development that the town’s unwillingness to perform under the agreement stems from its desire to renegotiate the terms of the agreement,” Shubin wrote, citing the October staff memo. 

How town may have violated Sunshine Law

While Florida rarely allows a governing body to meet in private, it made an exception in 2016 to consider “unsolicited” proposals from developers. The Legislature wanted to encourage developers to submit such proposals without worrying about competitors getting an unfair advantage.

The law did not require public notice of such meetings but required the closed meetings to be recorded.

Forest, which had already begun planning Nautilus 220, made an unsolicited proposal in January 2021 to redevelop the Lake Park waterfront and marina. The town also received a competing proposal from Creative Choice, backed by the developers of the Amrit condo-hotel in Riviera Beach.

Lake Park held eight closed-door meetings in 2021 and 2022 to review Forest’s proposal, make a selection and discuss terms. Before filing its lawsuit, Forest asked under public records law for the documents detailing those meetings.

That’s when the town found it had some critical record-keeping problems that amounted to potential violations of the open meetings provisions of the state’s Sunshine Law, Baird and his colleagues wrote in a Dec. 8 staff memo.

The key closed-door meeting came on Oct. 13, 2021, when the Town Commission selected Forest over Creative Choice to develop the waterfront. Afterward, the commission opened its meeting to the public to ratify the decision.

But the state law allowing the closed-door meeting had ended less than two weeks earlier, Baird wrote, automatically sunsetting after five years. A bill in 2021 to extend the law didn’t pass.

Baird, who noted that he did not attend the closed-door meetings overseen by then-Town Manager John D’Agostino and consultant Don Delaney, pointed out that if a resident took the town to court, a judge could rule Forest’s selection “void ab initio (from the beginning) or invalid.”

But a court also could rule that everything is fine because the public meeting after the closed session “cured” the violation, Baird wrote. The meeting would have had to meet the standard of  “a full open meeting” that provided the public an opportunity to weigh in, he wrote.

A court also could find that because the process began with the law in effect, the town had the right to continue holding meetings in secret.

No recordings of five meetings 

But the town could face another violation. It recorded only three of the eight closed-door sessions, even though state law required all the meetings be recorded. 

The town clerk explained to town officials that since the commissioners were not meeting in their normal place and she was not invited to attend the meetings, she set up an iPad to allow the town manager to record the meetings. 

“It should be noted,” Baird wrote, “that there could not be a ‘cure’ of the Sunshine Law violations for the town manager’s failure to record five of the private meetings.”

Additionally, the town has no recording of the public meeting following the Oct. 13 closed session. That would make it difficult to prove that the public session provided the commission the opportunity to “fully discuss its reasons for selecting Forest” and gave the public an opportunity to comment on the decision, Baird wrote.

“The only discussion on the motion reflected in the minutes,” he wrote, “were comments from the commissioners of the high quality of the presentations regarding the two unsolicited proposals.”

The four commissioners who attended those meetings could face liability for Sunshine Law violations, a “non-criminal infraction punishable by fine not exceeding $500,” Baird wrote. If they intended to violate the law, they would face a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by six months in jail or a $500 fine, he wrote.

Aside from D’Agostino and Delaney, Commissioners Michael O’Rourke, Kim Glas-Castro, John Linden and Roger Michaud attended the Oct. 13 meeting, the memo said. All but Glas-Castro are on the commission now.