WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The final designs for "West Palm Point" were approved this week by the City of West Palm Beach to build another new office tower downtown.
This after requests to redesign the garage portion of the project to better blend in with the building and downtown.
"We are very excited to see that vacant parking lot turn into a beautiful entrance to our city that's architecturally significant and the level that we need to be," says Cynthia Nalley, who is in favor of the West Palm Point development.
The $100M+ project will bring 447,484 square feet of office and retail space on the ground level.
"I'm really excited about the open space on top of the garage, I mean the renderings I saw make that look fantastic, and I'm just looking forward to walking over there and taking advantage of the retail or whatever they put on the ground floor and I'm excited," said Nalley.
The tower includes a 10 story parking structure for approximately 1,200 cars and 120 bicycles; includes rooftop gathering space with a 480 square foot café and shaded seating for tenants, a reflecting pool and green spaces
"West Palm is definitely the new hot spot to be in Florida for sure, and I think Florida has always been the hot spot in the United States, so it's only going to get better," said Jeffrey Fowler, the director of sales for Creative Edge Parties.
The New York based luxury catering and event planning company opened in West Palm Beach last year after more and more of their clients moved south.
"Especially this area we're in with The Square, and restoration hardware, this is the new hip spot in town," said Fowler.
West Palm Point is just one of at least three towers built or in the works downtown in the last couple of years:
- 360 Rosemary : 20 stories, 297,000 square feet of office space
- One Flagler Project : 25 story building with 270,000 square feet of office space, restaurant and public reading room.
- One West Palm project : twin building, 30-story structures, 200,000 square feet of office and hotel.
"Real estate, office space everything is moving fast down here so if you're thinking about coming down, come down and do it quick," said Fowler.
But for locals like Denise Meskunas, who walks her dogs along Okeechobee, she's not so excited.
Meskunas said adding a new tower and a parking garage will only add to the danger of an already congested road.
"I like new people moving in, but I think there's enough business space and residential space with the buildings that are in progress," said Meskunas.
For West Palm Point, architects and developers took factors like safety in mind when designing walkways to keep people as far from the streets as possible.