Stet News👑 The Don King Arena, formerly the Palm Beach Jai Alai fronton, comprising 52 acres on 45th Street in Mangonia Park, could be hosting office space and housing after the County Commission approved $5 million for water and wastewater improvements. It is reportedly the largest undeveloped parcel of land east of I-95. (Palm Beach Post $$$)
🔱 Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office used $111,000 in taxpayer money to pay a law firm to defend a second person as a grand jury investigated how $10 million from a Medicaid settlement sent to Hope Florida ended up in political committees. Using taxpayer money to defend public officials in a criminal investigation is illegal, according to an attorney general’s opinion.
- The governor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the expenditures. (Florida Trident)
🚦West Palm Beach will hold a public hearing tonight at 6 on its controversial Downtown Master Plan, which will direct the city in the future on issues such as downtown development and parking. The forum will be held in the Flagler Gallery in City Hall, 401 Clematis St. More information on the city website.
☪️ County Commissioner Maria Sachs’ meeting about preserving the Ag Reserve turned acrimonious as residents shouted her down over an approved Islamic Center at Lyons Road and 152nd Place South. The residents expressed concern that the supporters of the center could be extremists and could draw people who might be a threat. (Palm Beach Post, $$$)
🎓 Palm Beach residents Ken Griffin and Stephen Ross are aiming to make South Florida a leader in research and technological innovation by attracting top-shelf higher education here. Griffin donated $2 billion to bring a Carnegie Mellon campus to Miami, and Ross contributed $50 million toward the construction of a Vanderbilt University campus in West Palm Beach. (Palm Beach Post, $$$)
🔍 An air traffic controller did not warn pilots of an Amazon cargo plane, as required by federal regulations, of strong tailwinds before it landed and ran off the Miami International Airport runway, a preliminary report found. Five people died. (The Associated Press)
🚧 Demolition of a former Kmart by the end of the year will make way for the redevelopment of the shopping center at the northwest corner of South Dixie Highway and Hypoluxo Road in Lantana. (The Coastal Star)
🕯️ Fred Alfred Hazouri, a distinguished appellate judge who retired in 2013 and the husband of former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Pariente, died Sept. 27 at age 83. (Read the obituary)
☕️ Common Ground turns 20: How a community hub blossomed from a single piano lesson. (Lake Worth Beach Independent)
👷🏼♂️A celebrity developer known for pioneering “McMansions” in the Hamptons and building luxury homes in the Palm Beaches is moving its West Palm Beach offices to Lake Worth Beach. Farrell Building Company plans to set up shop in the former Mathews Brewing building on South H Street. (Lake Worth Beach Independent) $$$
🍽️ More New York restaurants are flocking to West Palm Beach. (The New York Post)
🪧 The rise of the nine-figure listing. Real estate agents in South Florida and around the country report an insatiable demand by the country’s wealthiest households for palatial estates that provide extreme privacy and spectacular luxuries. (The New York Times, email required)
🏨 The Nora Hotel in West Palm Beach is accepting its first room reservations starting Oct. 19. (The New York Times, fourth item, email required)
🧘🏼♀️ Stet News correspondent Janis Fontaine visits YogaMass at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton. (The Coastal Star)
🎧 “Top of Mind Florida,” the podcast by Michael Williams and Brian Crowley, presses James Martin, U.S. Rep. Brian Mast’s Democratic challenger in Florida’s 21st Congressional District, on questions including how he would pay for a government-backed health insurance plan with a $40 trillion national debt and how he would fix Social Security. (Listen now; watch after 4 pm today.)
