Laurie Mermet
Joel EngelhardtIn exclusive interview with Stet News, Jeff Greene described his $30 million offer as problem-solving — it would pay for the county’s planned runway extension.
Palm Beach County commissioners may have pumped the brakes on billionaire Jeff Greene’s proposal to expand north county airport, but the nascent airport operator isn’t going to let the decision clip his wings.
“I can come in and be the force behind adding aviation capacity for the county that doesn’t have enough,” he told Stet News, conceding that his inability to find covered parking for his Gulfstream at President Donald J. Trump International Airport spurred his interest.
Greene said he was disappointed by the commission’s Oct. 20 decision to seek bids to compete with his unsolicited proposal to play a prominent role in the growth of the North Palm Beach County Airport but he is likely to continue to pursue the deal, even in an open competition.
After meeting in the past year with county officials, he said he had been under the impression his proposal would meet the county’s needs.
Greene toured the airport off Beeline Highway with county officials about a year ago and afterward they sat down and brainstormed ideas, County Administrator Joe Abruzzo said.
Greene, who is worth $10 billion according to Forbes, said he isn’t pursuing the project to make money but to be transformative in an area of great county need: meeting demand for hangar space for small private jets.
Through his company, Jet Greene, he offered to buy 131 acres of undeveloped, county-owned land along Beeline Highway for $30 million, based on recent appraisals. The land immediately north of the runway, known as a “subsidiary development area,” is dominated by wetlands.
While the airport’s master plan anticipated the property would be developed, a recent county effort to sell it drew no interest.
Greene also would get a 50-year lease on 40 acres set aside for expansion, where a fixed-base operator would oversee a terminal, hangars, a fueling station and crew space.
While it’s not tied to his proposal, the county also is considering pursuing a customs location for the airport, a move that would make the leased property more valuable because it would allow flights from the Bahamas or other countries to land there rather than first touching down at DJT.
Greene would invest an estimated $60 million to $80 million to build the facilities but bring in a professional fixed-base operator to run it.
A question of economic development
The money would enable the county to move forward with its plan to extend the airport’s diagonal runway to 6,000 feet from 4,300 feet. Federal officials signed off in November 2024 on the runway extension, which would allow more jets, including Cessnas and Gulfstreams. But no money has been lined up to pay its estimated $30 million price tag.
Greene asked the county to enter negotiations exclusively with him, which would have been allowed under state law if the 131 acres would be used for economic development. But when asked at the Oct. 20 meeting what Greene planned to do with the land, his attorney, Harvey Oyer, could not say.
Without such detail, the offer did not qualify to be awarded without competition, County Attorney David Ottey said.
Oyer pushed back, insisting that the overall deal would meet the requirements of the state law.
“I think the economic benefit to this community is extraordinary even though I can’t tell you — other than 2,900 construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs and a $60 to $100 million investment, in addition to giving you your runway extension — I can’t tell you what the building is going to look like on the Beeline Highway. But if this is not a public-private partnership that creates economic development I don’t know what Section 125 of the Florida Statutes was meant to do.”
Several fixed-base operators told commissioners they were interested in competing for control of the 40 acres. One, Sky Harbour Group Corp., which bills itself as the largest developer of home base campuses and FBOs in the country, submitted an unsolicited proposal to run the expansion area in September.
Another, Brad Kost of Stellar Aviation, said FBO operators likely would match Greene’s $30 million offer to win a 50-year lease to be the airport’s fixed-base operator.
Commissioners decided to find out. They ordered staff to draw up the terms of a solicitation to seek offers for the 40-acre fixed-base operator area and for the 131 acres.
Airports Director Laura Beebe said she would return early next year with the terms.
Airport growth worries residents
But while Greene sees opportunity, some nearby residents see reason for concern.
For residents wary for decades over airport growth, more development could mean more noise and truck traffic along Beeline Highway and nearby neighborhoods.
The airport is bordered by protected wetlands. Its closest neighbor is Avenir, the nearly 4,000-home development rising in Palm Beach Gardens on the former Vavrus Ranch property.
Sara Miller, a resident of the nearby PGA National community, worries that development of the airport property would bring warehouses or distribution centers.
“The people of Mirasol, the people of PGA National, the people who just bought $2 million homes in Avenir, they’re not going to have it,” she said. “And what about the businesses that might not want plane traffic?”
Greene, who did not attend the Oct. 20 meeting, told Stet News he saw no conflict with neighbors, saying that the airport is in the middle of nowhere. As for the high-end gated communities rising in north county, more space for private planes, he said, is “the best thing that ever happened to them.”
Miller criticized the district’s county commissioner, Maria Marino, for allowing the proposal to move forward.
“She had an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, this is my district. No, we’re not doing this,’ but instead, she made a motion to open it up to more bids, and I was stunned,” Miller said. “As soon as I heard that, I started emailing people.”
Marino responds
Marino appeared Oct. 27 at the North County Neighborhood Coalition meeting with Beebe to explain her actions, saying she had spent the past week responding to concerns about airport growth.
The two parcels that Greene is pursuing have both been identified as development options in the airport’s master plan, Marino said. And such development will not alter the airport’s ban on commercial flights.
“There will not be commercial flights. We do not have the runway for it. We do not have the wingspan for it,” she said.
Instead, it will cater to private plane owners, Beebe said.
“They’re the folks that want to bring their nice plane to the airport. They want to store it in a nice facility. They don’t want it sitting out in the sun and the rain and all of the elements,” Beebe said.
The county’s main airport, DJT, does not have space for more private planes. North county is meant to relieve the small-plane traffic there.
Additionally, the county is required under federal grants to make land available for aeronautical use and cannot refuse access when there is a justified demand, she said.
“I’m going to be completely transparent that we’ve been talking for a very long time that there are additional facilities that are needed for aviation development, just based on existing demand, primarily in terms of aircraft storage (at the north county airport),” Beebe said.
The 131 acres is intended for light industrial use.
“We have had users come to us interested in doing much more intense usage, but we would say no,” Beebe said. “We don’t think that they would be appropriate for the community.”
A decades-old airport debate resurfaces
For former Palm Beach Gardens Mayor Eric Jablin, who came to his political awakening fighting airport growth in the early 1990s, the debate feels like deja vu.
“I’m probably the oldest living individual left in the original process of restricting this airport,” said Jablin, 84.
The airport’s surroundings have changed drastically over the decades. Palm Beach Gardens had 22,965 residents in 1990, compared with about 65,000 today. Several communities, including Avenir and Mirasol, did not exist in 1994, when the airport opened.
A warehouse distribution center on the 131 acres, he said, “could be extremely damaging to not only the environment but to the quality of life of those people who are living in and around that airport.”
In 2016, with Jablin still in office, Palm Beach Gardens signed off on the airport’s runway extension as long as the county applied for a control tower. The county has applied but a tower would cost $35 million, money the airport does not have. A virtual tower, which uses sensors and infrared thermal cameras to provide information to air traffic controllers, would cost an estimated $14 million.
Marino and Beebe reassured residents that no development plan for the 131 acres has been approved and that commissioners and federal aviation officials will control what gets built there.
Sky Harbour’s unsolicited proposal to the county calls for leasing the 40-acre FBO site for $178 million over 50 years. They offered to invest $62 million into developing the site. They didn’t make an offer for the 131-acre site.
“Palm Beach County is one of the fastest-growing business aviation communities in the country, yet its based-aircraft owners remain underserved by modern hangar infrastructure,” Sky Harbour wrote. The north county airport “has the land, airfield and location to capture that demand.”
