Joe CapozziDeveloper Charles Modica’s still-to-be-seen proposal awaits public scrutiny, key year-end deadline.
With the Jupiter Town Council’s approval Jan. 20 of a settlement agreement preserving more than half of the 10.4-acre Suni Sands waterfront site, the property’s owner is preparing to submit a development application for a commercial project on the rest of the land.
But while the agreement allows the town to preserve 5.5 acres of historically and archaeologically significant waterfront land, it also allows Charles Modica to cancel the agreement and pursue legal remedies if the council rejects his plans.
The settlement, approved on a 4-1 vote after more than two years of mediation, requires the Town Council to consider Modica’s new plans by Dec. 31 after a review process with public hearings.
Council members were optimistic that Modica would present a plan acceptable to both sides.
“It’s a wonderful compromise and a rare opportunity to secure waterfront property that we didn’t think we might be able to before,” Council Member Malise Sundstrom said before the vote.
“We have until the end of the year to get a series of applications approved and in their public nature and with Planning and Zoning looking at them,’’ she said. “It is contingent on that. This is a framework we are approving. I am grateful for the opportunity to preserve this land.”
Unlike the public hearings in 2023, where Native Americans and historic preservationists packed Town Hall urging the town to reject any development of the site, only a handful of people spoke Jan. 20, with just one speaker clearly in favor of the settlement, first reported Jan. 16 by Stet News.
Town avoids potential legal liability
The agreement, mediated by Fort Lauderdale attorney Sam Goren, allows Modica to seek changes to the town’s growth plan, zoning rules and land-development regulations. He also can seek to add to the town code “a definition of condominium hotel,” the settlement says. The settlement indicates he wants to build a dock on the Jupiter Inlet near the former Sperry boathouse.
Those changes, if approved by the town, “will yield a development opportunity on what’s left that wasn’t necessarily there before,” Philippe Jeck, Modica’s attorney, told Stet News.
In July 2023, the Town Council granted a so-called “certificate to dig,” giving Modica permission to build on 6 acres of the site, a decision Modica appealed, triggering the start of the mediation in November 2023.
At the time, Modica, who bought the 10.4-acre site in 2013 for $17 million, argued that the 6 acres in the town’s order was too restrictive for his plan to build a 125-room inn, 72 townhomes and condos and about 12,000 square feet of restaurants and stores.
In other words, Town Attorney Tom Baird told the council on Jan. 20, Modica “was alleging the order would result in an unconstitutional taking of his property.”
If those allegations were proven in court, a judge could compel the town to pay Modica the fair-market value of the prime waterfront land, potentially topping $100 million.
“The risk to the town in terms of the potential liability was great,” Baird told the council.
The agreement, he said, “provides a framework that balances the council’s certificate to dig order but provides the owner with some of the relief he requested.”
Goren, who during mediation pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of the town’s and Modica’s arguments, “could have recommended a development agreement and bypassed the public hearing process,” Baird said. “That’s not what occurred here. This will follow the normal review process including public hearings.”
Terms of the deal
Jeck said Modica’s team will submit a similar version of his original development proposal before July. If the town approves the plan by Dec. 31, Modica would:
- Give the town a 4.07-acre shell midden in the center of the property where the Jeaga and Jobe Native American tribes lived 5,000 years ago.
- Sell the town 1.41 acres in the northwest corner of the site for $10.5 million, an amount both sides say represents a deep discount. It is the location of the town’s first commercial hub, the northern terminus of the Celestial Railway at the Jupiter Inlet, where boats delivered passengers and cargo.
- Preserve a strip of land 950 feet long and 9.5 feet wide, where the Celestial Railway cut across the property from 1889 until 1895. .
“These properties will be preserved in perpetuity for the public,” Baird said, noting that the midden and railway right of way are listed on the Florida Division of Historical Resources Master Site.
The town has to figure out how to pay for the 1.4 acres, which under the agreement would be limited to uses consistent with a passive park.
Plans to ‘honor this uniquely magnificent property’
The 1.4 acres offer dramatic views of the confluence of the Loxahatchee and Indian rivers at the mouth of the Jupiter Inlet, near the Jupiter Lighthouse. The entire 10.4-acre Suni Sands site, a former mobile home park, has been closed to the public for more than 120 years.
“To be able to see the bodies of water connect there is really special,” Sundstrom said.
Vice Mayor Ron Delaney voted against the agreement. He said he wanted the town’s preserved land to include the entire waterfront. He also has concerns about a potential dock harming environmentally sensitive seagrass, a habitat for sea turtles.
Jeck said Modica, the developer of Charlie & Joe’s Love Street restaurant nearby, plans to submit a proposal for what he considers a legacy project that will enhance the area.
“The proposed inn/condo hotel use will best complement the other Jupiter Inlet Village businesses and residents, meet a community-wide need and honor this uniquely magnificent property,” Jeck said in an email to Stet.
“The architecture is expected to be in the vernacular paying homage to the history of the area.”
Christine Pinello, a member of the town’s advisory Historic Resources Board that recommended the council prohibit development on the site, said she would have preferred to save the entire site.
“It’s very hard to interpret anything archeological once you take it out of the context of where it is. But given the way rampant development of archaeological sites was allowed in the past, I am pleased to get this much preserved,” Pinello told Stet News after the hearing.
“I don’t think Modica gets a round of applause for this,” she said. “If he really wanted a lasting legacy, he could have been the first person to turn the tide totally around in the right direction and donated it all.”
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. He publishes the Lake Worth Beach Independent on Substack, covering the town where he lives.
