“Inspiration Lake Worth”: About the meeting last night at the Casino

As part of its regular series of events, the Palm Beach County Planning Congress held an event at the Lake Worth Casino building last night (11/29/16) on redevelopment in Lake Worth. It was another follow-up to an event from 2014 when the Department of Community Sustainability reached out to groups of investors, urban planners, engineers and land use attorneys to promote the City’s development review process.

This particular meeting was for government/urban planners and others in related fields to learn how the City of Lake Worth is working to turn things around. Remember, the many successes since 2012 when the new LDR’s went into effect followed 8 years of nearly no commercial investment whatsoever.

The RSVP’s were around 60 or so but the turnout was little disappointing. In hindsight scheduling a meeting on a Tuesday night maybe wasn’t the best of decisions. Thirty-five to 40 people showed up.

Lake Worth’s Community Sustainability Director William Waters, Economic Development Director Dolores Key and Maxime Ducoste (the Assistant Director for Planning & Preservation) made presentations about the changes the City made to the land development regulations and the development review process. The videos are worth watching but it’s important to understand that some of the discussion was of a technical nature and targeted to a specific audience.

William Waters, Director of Community Sustainability (click on images to enlarge).

From a period of nearly zero new investment prior to 2012 the City has since processed and approved many projects which Mr. Waters reviewed. This begins at the 14:20 mark of the first video. He emphasized the ease at which a number of new projects went through the development review process and the amount of investment totals since. He also highlighted many projects in the Park of Commerce area west of I-95. That amounts to a total investment of $103 million in the City of Lake Worth.

Maxime Ducoste, Assistant Director for Planning & Preservation.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the presentation were those projects either recently reviewed, currently being reviewed, or on the horizon. Maxime Ducoste took care of that portion of the program. You will be surprised by the number and location of these projects, many of which will fill long vacant lots in commercially-zoned areas of the City. His portion of the presentation begins at the 25 minute mark of first video (see link above) and continues in the second video.

Dolores Key, Economic Development Director.

Thank You to everyone who attended this meeting. If you have any comments or observations please send me an email: WesBlackman@gmail.com