Stet NewsThank you for joining us. For you today, a newborn who could beat the odds, some relief for airport neighbors, what’s next at Suni Sands, a transit report from Stet’s Inlet Grove Community Voices team and a Forum Club double shot.
❤️ An infant fighting for her life
Mabel Rose Correal, born just six weeks ago with a rarely seen heart condition, is fighting for her life.
The lower left side of her heart, which pumps out the oxygenated blood, is missing. One valve leaks. And she had a hole in her diaphragm that left her kidney pressing on her lung.
The big picture: The survival rate for the condition is very low. One study could find only nine cases like Mabel Rose’s in English medical literature.
What they’re saying: “She’s very feisty,” said mom Hanna Correal of Lake Worth Beach. “She has a reputation in the cardiac unit.”
Zoom in: The baby’s parents were living in her hospital room at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami but could do little to care for her. The nurses have to do that work.
- Hanna can sometimes help change her baby’s diaper.
- Her parents, Hanna and Mateo, can’t hold Mabel Rose often because it takes a whole medical team to make that happen.
In the room: The doctors didn’t want to give them false hope that first week, but the situation was dire. Only two pulmonary veins appeared where there needed to be four, Hanna said. And if they didn’t see all four on a dye test the next morning, they said that “we would have to have a very hard conversation.
“We had a night when we had to talk about if we had to bury her, where we had to bury her. How we wouldn’t want her to suffer and would live our lives honoring her.”
The next morning, the test found all four veins.
What’s next: Mabel Rose and family traveled Saturday to Gainesville, where she will be evaluated for a heart transplant at UF Health Shands Hospital.
A group will walk in Mabel Rose’s honor at a congenital heart research event on Feb. 7 in West Palm Beach.
- Hanna has also started a GoFundMe page to help with medical expenses.
Keep reading at StetNews.org: “Her story is marked by God’s hand.”
— Holly Baltz
✈️ A new Mar-a-Lago flight path
Thousands of West Palm Beach and Palm Beach residents got a surprise last week: The FAA ordered planes from Palm Beach International Airport not to fly over their houses.
Jets still aren’t allowed to fly over Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s Winter White House, which is due east of the airport. Pilots must turn north before they reach it.
Why it matters: Residents in several historic neighborhoods suddenly started hearing jet noise after rules in place for decades changed in October.
- Before October, air traffic affected 2,200 homes where 5,000 people live. After the change, jets began flying over 11,000 homes where 21,000 people live.
- The rules apply whether Trump is at Mar-a-Lago or not.
What they’re saying: “It’s not making us whole as far as putting everything back the way it used to be, but it’s a few steps closer to more precise flying,” said Nancy Pullum, chair of Citizens Committee on Airport Noise, which has been trying for months to find ways for the FAA to change the rules.
Zoom in: Neighbors subjected to the noise before the October change will now hear it again.
- Officials point out that some of their homes have been insulated against noise.
- They also say residents knew about the noise when they bought their homes.
Zoom out: Palm Beach County and the two cities sued the FAA six weeks ago, demanding it justify why the rules changed in October.
- The FAA didn’t explain the sudden change in flight rules last week or in October.
Read more about the controversy at StetNews.org.
— Jane Musgrave
☀️ Development pitch next for Suni Sands
The Suni Sands settlement agreement, approved Jan. 20 by the Jupiter Town Council, calls for public hearings this year on a development plan for the remainder of the waterfront site.
If the plans don’t go through, developer Charles Modica can still call off the settlement.
Why it matters: Council members who voted 4-1 in favor of the settlement, which calls for the town to pay $10.5 million to preserve some of the land, were optimistic that Modica would present an acceptable plan while assuring preservation of key historic and Native American sites at the former mobile home park on the Loxahatchee River.
What they’re saying: “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 MemberMalise Sundstrom said.
Zoom in: Modica’s attorney, Philippe Jeck, said the developer of the nearby Charlie & Joe’s Love Street restaurant wants a legacy project that will “best complement the other Jupiter Inlet Village businesses and residents, meet a community-wide need and honor this uniquely magnificent property.”
As Stet reported last week, the deal calls for Modica to:
- 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.
- 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.
Of note: The deal also gives Modica the right to seek permission for a new condominium-hotel definition in town code and to build a dock on the Jupiter Inlet near the former Sperry boathouse.
- In all, 5.5 acres of the 10.4-acre site would be preserved.
Yes, but: One critic isn’t pleased. Christine Pinello, a member of the town’s Historic Resources Board, wanted the entire 10 acres preserved. “If (Modica) really wanted a lasting legacy,” Pinello told Stet News, “he could have been the first person to turn the tide totally around in the right direction and donated it all.”
Read more about the town’s decision at StetNews.org.
— Joe Capozzi
🚏 Palm Tran trims its Uber program
Palm Tran is making changes to a pilot program that pays for Uber rides for some bus passengers.
Catch up quick: In 2024, Palm Tran consolidated low-ridership bus routes in Boca Raton, Royal Palm Beach and in a six-city area that includes Riviera Beach.
- The money saved was used to help pay for Uber or Yellow Cab rides within three geographic zones that were served by the routes
- The rides are intended to connect users to Palm Tran bus stops where they would continue their journey.
A little more than one year into the $1.3 million BusLink program, data showed that too many of the 5,000 riders used the free on-demand rides instead of Palm Tran.
Why it matters: The results illustrate a challenge of efficiently managing the first and last mile for users of public transportation.
What they’re saying: “The biggest challenge was (getting passengers to) utilize the program as it was intended,” Ira Brewster, director of transit planning for Palm Tran, told Riviera Beach City Council members Wednesday.
The changes starting Feb. 1 are:
- $8 vouchers will be reduced to $5 per ride, which will mean shorter free rides.
- The number of rides per passenger each day will drop from four to two.
- A BusLink zone that stretches from 45th Street in West Palm Beach to just north of PGA Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens will be divided into three zones. In Riviera Beach, rides will be limited to an area between Blue Heron and Northlake boulevards.
The smaller zones are designed to push riders toward Palm Tran routes.
The big picture: Palm Tran operates 31 routes and serves about 29,000 riders a day. Its $300 million in annual revenue includes $79 million from property taxes, plus federal grants, reserves and bus fares.
What’s next: Palm Tran will track data for the next six months to see how people use BusLink and report the results.
Who wrote this story: This story was reported by Community Voices writer Micaja Etienne.
What is CV: Community Voices is a partnership between Stet News and Inlet Grove High School. Stet News is underwriting the pilot to train and pay students to cover Riviera Beach.
Stet’s Carolyn DiPaolo contributed to this story.
🍊 The Juice
👛 Tri-Rail is looking at raising fares as it lobbies the Legislature to restore its $42 million allotment, which was cut to $15 million in last year’s legislative session. (Sun-Sentinel $$$)
🏃➡️ Catch up on the latest property tax cut proposals as they stream through the Florida House. (Florida Trident)
🤝🏼 A Related Ross affiliate now owns the majority of the condominiums in Southbridge, an aging complex at the foot of the Southern Boulevard bridge across from Mar-a-Lago. Southbridge Acquisitions paid about $38 million for 45 of the 63 condos, an average of $844,444 each. Most were valued by the property appraiser at or below $250,000 before the sales. (South Florida Business Journal $$$)
🏈 Jupiter High School’s head football coach has accepted a job at Division III Dill Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Jason Kradman led the Warriors to their first undefeated 10-0 regular season in program history. (The Palm Beach Post $$$)
🚨 Red alert! Downtown Lake Worth Beach is about to be romped by an incursion of Mrs. Ropers! (Lake Worth Beach Independent)
🪴A group seeking to place a recreational-marijuana constitutional amendment on the ballot was dealt a blow on Friday as an appeals court sided with the Florida secretary of state to invalidate 70,000 signatures. The deadline to submit petition signatures is Sunday. (South Florida Sun Sentinel $$$)
🎙️ “Top of Mind Florida,” the podcast by Michael Williams and Brian Crowley, talks property taxes, Florida DOGE and the “Silver Tsunami” with Palm Beach County-based Florida Senate Minority Leader Lori Berman. (Listen now; watch.)
561NSIDER: 💬 Forum Club special: 2 guests in 1 week
Takeaways in her own words from Janet Yellen’s hourlong talk Friday at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches. Yellen, Federal Reserve chief under Barack Obama and Treasury secretary under Joe Biden, answered questions from New York Times reporter Colby Smith and Forum Club President Harvey Oyer, who posed questions from the audience, during the luncheon at the Cohen Pavilion at the Kravis Center.
On the cost of tariffs: “The evidence shows that the foreign countries exporting goods to us, they’re not paying the tariffs. … The tariffs are falling on American businesses and American households. … I personally don’t understand what the goal is of putting these tariffs in place. So, to me, many of the sanctions that are being used don’t promote the well-being of Americans.”
On the next Federal Reserve chief, replacing Jerome Powell: “That person’s in a very difficult situation because monetary policy is not determined by one individual. There are 19 members of the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee), and 12 of them vote. And you need seven votes to carry the FOMC. … A new chair needs to gain leadership of the committee by making a coherent intellectual case for the monetary policy they want to follow. And it has to be believable to market participants. And how you can do that while also having assured the president that you agree with what he’s saying … I think that is really going to be a very tough assignment.”
Stet bonus coverage: One comment from Bill Whitaker, “60 Minutes” correspondent, who took questions from West Palm Beach native and retired “60 Minutes” producer Rome Hartman, as well as Oyer, at a Jan. 20 Forum Club luncheon at the Kravis.
On “60 Minutes” credibility: “Every word we write, and I mean every word we write, is checked and rechecked and rechecked. … So, I’m troubled when I hear people who think that we’re just throwing things out there and it’s our opinions and whatever. I would hope that 57 years of doing this has impressed upon people that we are giving you factual information. We’re all human. And we all have thoughts and opinions. But this is not a platform for you to hear what I think. This is a platform to share with you factual information that I have gathered.”
What’s next: Hedge fund billionaire, Palm Beach land investor and Boca Raton-reared Ken Griffin appears at the Forum Club on Feb. 3. Tickets are sold out but there’s a waiting list.
Read more from Yellen and Whitaker or share this story at StetNews.org.
— Joel Engelhardt
Editor’s note: Joel is a member of the Forum Club.
