My trip to the northern part of Palm Beach County...

Re-Post - this is getting a lot of attention, originally from late October.

Yesterday, I pointed my compass north for business purposes and happened to have my camera with me. It had been a while since being in that part of the county and ended up getting off at the Donald Ross exit. If you head east on Donald Ross Road, you will pass by the Abacoa development on the north side of the road. This is where Roger Dean Stadium (Palm Beach County's current location for spring training facilities for major league baseball), as well as a branch of Florida Atlantic University.

It turns out that just to the east of Abacoa are the headquarters for Scripps Florida and the Max Planck Institute. Both of these facilities were products of state and local economic development efforts to create a base for biotech research facilities in Palm Beach County. Having never seen this campus environment before, I took the following pictures.

 From time to time I report on the antics of Anarchist-EarthFirst leaders Cara Jennings and Panagioti Tsolkas. Now and then I get queries from my readers about this legendary "Briger Forest." Questions as "Where is it?", "What's the big deal?", etc. I thought, well, I'm in the area, why not visit the legendary Briger "Forest" and take a few pictures?

So, just to the south of Donald Ross Road is another piece of property known as the "Briger Tract" of about 700 acres. It is largely undeveloped at this time, but is slated for a mixed use development project that would include residential, commercial and uses related to further development associated with the Scripps Florida facility. Here is the general layout of this part of the county:

Hood Road runs along the south side of the Briger parcel, ending at I-95. There is already some development along the southern and eastern edges of the property. The Mandel Jewish Community Center, located at the #1 above, takes up the southwestern corner of the property. It is a newer building that backs up to I-95 and its parking area runs alongside the building to the east. There is also an equestrian facility immediately east of the Community Center that goes further north into the Briger property. Here is a picture of a small portion of the horse stables and grounds.

Below are pictures from Grandiflora Road denoted by the number '2' on the map above. Note the menacing sign for people thinking of trespassing! Apparently, Grandiflora Road is going to be extended in the near future. This also happens to be the campus for the Upper Benjamin School and they have some major construction projects ongoing, including a new theater, I was told.

Sign posted at the current western end of Grandiflora Road. We know why.

Notice of the possibility of the presence of the threatened Eastern Indigo Snake and related instructions if encountered in the area.

As you can see, the Briger 'Forest' is east of I-95. There are many places like Briger that can be used for homes, condos and apartments to accommodate our new residents flooding the state of Florida. Tracts as Briger and many others would put less pressure on developers as they proceed westward. One example of those western projects is the Minto West development currently under consideration by the County Commission. 

There are also a number of gated communities along the eastern side of the property, along the west side of Central Boulevard.

Thus ends a little peek at part of the county that you may not be familiar with, but others in our city are.