Sunset -- Correcting the Wrongs of the Past

“The City requires smart growth and stability,” so said the local paper. I agree. It is too bad that the City, in the past, has made a lot of horrendous decisions that have affected that stability as well as our financial health.

Just think of the money they have spent on 6th Avenue South and 10th Avenue North—nearly $15 MILLION DOLLARS and for what? To attract developers that never came and never will for years. Now the CRA has a vision to develop certain areas of the downtown as a TOD and an artist destination and just agreed to a $200,000 contract to plan it.

The City wants the Park of Commerce developed and just voted to spend a lot of money for a Needs Analysis and Preliminary Engineering Study urged on by Planning & Zoning. Our cost for this? $250,000 in matching funds. One quarter of a million for another study during a financial crunch that has made us lay-off workers and outsource our police and fire because they say “we can’t afford them.”

We now have a City Commission trying to right some of the wrongs of the past and they are forging ahead. To sign a long-term contract with Palm Beach County as our sole water provider was one of those wrongs. To sign a contract with Greater Bay to develop our beach was another. One that is really closer to home for me is the Sunset parcel.

Looking at the entrance to the single family residence on the Sunset parcel

The local paper mentioned something about “huge sums already plowed into the land” by the owners of Sunset. Nothing on the property has been plowed other than removing some ancient, beautiful Oak trees. No money has been spent by the owners other than buying the property for $1.5 million. No money has been spent on a site plan or any other plan other than the one in their mind that they want to develop or flip, who knows. I mentioned a needs analysis above. No needs analysis was done on the Sunset property. Why not? They would have found out there was NO need for more townhouses. No one knows what the owners really plan other than to get a favorable zoning inconsistent to the neighborhood of 450 homes. The owners say they took a traffic study and it was perfectly fine. The took one years ago in the month of June when NO ONE IS HERE, as the snowbirds have already left the area and the State had not yet widened I-95.

The owner can build 7 units an acre in Single Family 7 zoning. He was allowed to build only 5 before the parcel was annexed into the city. The City has allowed him 10 units an acre in a zoning that was voted on for the property (P&Z and the former Commission) allowing 20 units an acre. The neighborhood wants his building to be consistent with the other 450 homes there.

The Herald says that people are losing “real investment and faith in the political process in Lake Worth. That was the trouble all along in Sunset. What about the 450 families who bought into a single family residential neighborhood that some politicians, by the flick of a Bic, decided to change for one sole owner. What about the investment of all those living there? Does that not count for anything?

It was a political decision to give the owners of the Sunset parcel a different zoning then the rest of the neighborhood. Now it is a different political environment set on correcting the wrongs of the past. Which commission's decision affected more lives in the neighborhood? One owner or Four Hundred and Fifty? Which decision is correct according to the Master Plan? Which decision follows our Comp Plan on single family residential neighborhoods? Only one, that decision of the present Commission.

The past Commission's argument was that the zoning change was for the betterment of Lake Worth--Remember the "big picture" argument? The only zoning that makes sense in this neighborhood is Single Family 7 and it doesn't need politicians or a politically appointed planning board to tell them differently.