Joel EngelhardtAs developer prepares to refinance, 1981 deed restriction raises complication that city is working to unravel.
Palm Beach Gardens officials are working to get a release from a 1981 deed restriction that calls for Plant Drive Park — site of a new ice rink complex — to be maintained as a noncommercial city park.
The deed restriction never came up in the public hearings over the past two years as the city leased the 8-acre park to a nonprofit backed by billionaire Larry Robbins. The lease allowed the nonprofit to raze the park and replace it with a complex featuring two ice rinks and a restaurant.
However, it does appear in the packet of documents approved by the City Council in April 2024 to lease the park for 40 years to the nonprofit, called the Palm Beach North Athletic Foundation. At the very end of the 87-page packet, in Exhibit D to the lease, the legal descriptions for four parcels that make up the park include the 1981 restriction.
City officials never raised the matter with council members or the public, despite a yearlong effort to negate the deal from residents worried about losing a neighborhood park and its free skateboard area. It is unclear whether the city knew about the deed restriction and city officials could not be reached for comment.
At a January 2025 hearing, former Mayor Mike Martino told council members that city founder John D. MacArthur, who gave the city the land, would have reclaimed the land rather than see it “covered over by concrete from east to west and north to south.”
Fifth Third Bank considers loan
The deed restriction emerged in recent weeks as Heather Deitchman, a resident who fought the park’s conversion and made an unsuccessful bid in March for a City Council seat, pursued city records concerning the nonprofit’s efforts to line up a bank loan to replace Robbins’ financial commitment toward the $55 million project.
Robbins committed to financing the project as it raced to meet a city-imposed deadline to have all the money in place by late June. He expressed interest in one day shifting the loan obligation and PBNAF has submitted paperwork to the city to make Fifth Third Bank the lender.
In a March 19 email provided in response to a public records request submitted by Stet News, City Attorney Max Lohman assured lawyers representing Palm Beach North that the city is preparing to provide a pleading “to have a receiver or trustee appointed” to get the deed restriction released.
While the email did not identify the deed or the defunct company, PBNAF lawyers at Nason Yeager referred Lohman to Joshua Mintz, vice president, general counsel and secretary of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago.
The foundation is MacArthur’s legacy, a $9 billion organization committed to “building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.”
Martino said MacArthur donated Plant Drive Park, the city’s first park, in 1965, and historical documents show it was dedicated in 1968. The park is east of Military Trail behind Palm Beach Gardens High School, which opened later in 1968.
‘Public park only’
MacArthur died in 1978, leaving his extensive land holdings to his foundation.
Three years later, one of MacArthur’s companies, Royal American Industries, deeded a portion of the park site to the city. Deitchman obtained the deed from the city in response to a public records request and shared it with Stet News.
The deed contained this provision:
“The conveyance evidenced by this Special Warranty Deed shall be for only so long as the entirety of the property conveyed hereby is used as a municipal, non-commercial public park only.
“In the event that all or any part of the above-described property should be abandoned or should not be used as a municipal, non-commercial public park, then and in that event, by operation of law, the title to the entirety of the above-described property shall revert to the Grantor, its successors or assigns.”
In response to a question from Stet News, Mintz of the MacArthur Foundation, said in a March 24 email: “Generally, when we are asked by parties to release older deed restrictions or similar documents, we will consider such requests based on the information we have available with respect to the specific request.”
He later acknowledged he is researching the matter.
During debate over the plan, the city argued that the ice rink would continue the use of the land as a park, Deitchman said.
Lift restriction in exchange for skate park
In answering a question from City Council Member Dana Middleton during the January 2025 meeting, PBNAF representative Angela Biagi of WGI drew laughter from the audience when she said: “This is not a commercial operation. This is a public recreation facility.”
Park supporters argued the ice rink complex would restrict access because even if it offered to subsidize some low-income customers, it would charge most people a fee to use the ice.
On Thursday, Deitchman wrote to the foundation and its board to let them know of the community effort to maintain the park, even though the two-story ice rink complex is rising on the site.
“Had the restriction been known earlier, the community could have raised immediate legal and procedural challenges,” she wrote. “Instead, residents spent nearly two years advocating to preserve the park without access to one of the most important legal protections governing the property.”
She asked the MacArthur Foundation to consider getting something in exchange for lifting the restriction.
“If the board determines that the restriction may legally be modified, any such change should include significant, dedicated compensation equal to the value of the public park being lost. That compensation should not go to the city’s general fund or the iceplex project. Instead, it should be placed into a restricted fund to design and construct a public, non-commercial skate park — reflecting a key feature that no longer exists within the city following the park’s removal.”
Joel is a founder, reporter and editor at Stet News. His award-winning newspaper career spanned more than 40 years, including 28 years at The Palm Beach Post, which he left in 2020. Joel lives with his wife in Palm Beach Gardens. He volunteers on the board of NAMI Palm Beach County and the Palm Beach Gardens Historical Society.
