Does someone care to show me where over-development exists in Lake Worth?

The above set of pictures was taken in July of 2008.  No need to update them as the conditions are still the same. (You may have to flip through these manually)

This is a tour of vacant land along South Federal taken in February of this year.

Here is an e-mail message sent to our Commissioners as post on another local blog (highlighting added):
Dear Commissioners. You have a huge responsibility and an opportunity to bring our city out of this financial morass. You need to undo some of what past administrations misguidedly enacted and you need to do something proactive and creative in this dreadful economy. I don't have all the solutions but propose a couple.

The paper this morning had an article detailing how the housing market here has crashed lower than any other place in the area. It doesn't take a PhD in city planning to notice that overbuilding made this inevitable. Just a drive past dozens and dozens of unoccupied brand new townhouses on Federal Highway is evidence enough. Putting a stop to any further new construction is one action long over due.

Another is give the unions a choice - good faith binding arbitration or face the fact that jobs will be eliminated. You can't get blood from a rock. If it's not there, it's not there. Hang tough. (And this comes from a died-in-the-wool, pro labor union member.)

Best wishes to you all,

Lisa Stewart

1232 North L Street

Does anyone believe that Lake Worth is an island and not part of the United States or world economies? Have we all read the accounts of the worst recession since the Great Depression? The boom that led to the real estate bust was not a local phenomenon.  And you shouldn't have to be a PhD in Economics to understand that.

Regionally we experienced more of the first wave of the bust, but that is consistent with our history as a "boom and bust" economy.  In many of the same ways, Florida was the leading edge of the downturn, just as in the 1920s.  When I moved here in 1989, we had just gone through the Savings and Loan Debacle and there was a glut of office and commercial space that had to be absorbed into the market.  This was taking place all around the country and not just in Palm Beach County and Lake Worth.  With few exceptions, the redevelopment we experienced here in Lake Worth (residential townhomes) was on land that was already zoned and had the land use designations to support it.  The number of units that was added to the supply of housing in Lake Worth is small in comparison to other cities.  Where there was redevelopment generally happened in places that needed physical improvement or blight removal anyway.  If you would like me to show you those areas, I'd be happy to.

At one point, right after the election of Marc Drautz as Mayor, there was a call for a moratorium on all development in Lake Worth.  We have had a de facto moratorium ever since this crew got on the Commission.  Be that as it may now be, we, sitting on the Planning and Zoning Board back then, put together a "zoning-in-progress" that halted speculation in the areas of the city we really needed to protect the character of - those historic districts around the downtown.  At the time, an urban planner colleague of mine had 19 potential townhouse projects that he was getting ready to submit.  Our work on the "zoning-in-progress" stopped those from going forward.  You don't hear about those since that doesn't fit the "boogieman developer" narrative of the Commissioners Jennings, Mulvehill and Golden, along with their ardent supporters.

Don't forget our over million dollar Master Planning effort that was on-going during this time period.  The reason for that was to find a redevelopment model that worked for Lake Worth.  The only material thing we have to show for that effort is a Comprehensive Plan that limits height to three stories.  When is the majority on the dais going to show us what we can do with these vacant lots?  Anything built upon them would represent change.  How are our "leaders" going to lead us to where we are responsibly using our land resources and provide a stable, sustainable tax base for the city so that existing residents aren't left with the tab?

You can only run on a "no growth" campaign for so long.  Pretty soon, the lawsuits springing from saying "no" to the wrong things or doing it the wrong way all cost money in the form of costly financial settlements levied by the Court system to pay for the lost rights of property owners.

Let's see what our millage rate will be once the budget is approved for FY 2010-2011.  How will that be used in the November campaigns?

So, we are living in a town that lost almost half of its property tax value over the past five years, not due to overbuilding, but due to the effects of the overall economy, our continued negative public image as it relates to our electric utility and lack of attention to our existing housing stock in terms of code enforcement - relative to the other municipalities in Palm Beach County.  We also have a Commission that thinks it is there to stop all investment and redevelopment in the city and that is what is the biggest contributor to the financial morass in which we find ourselves.

Bring it on!  Perhaps the real over-development applies to the imaginations of those who support the current majority on the dais.