300 Townhouses Coming to Clint Moore and 441?

There’s a plan in the works to convert the Thomas Produce facility at Clint Moore and 441 into townhomes and also commercial space. We heard from friends in The Oaks that they were invited to a meeting to hear more about it. Below is an image from the application, showing the location and indicating to some extent the proposed change.

You can also see the location on Google Maps:

The Petition Summary document (pdf) indicates a potential for: “Commercial (407,286 sf max.) and Residential (299 dwelling units). That document and the “justification statement” are at the bottom of this article.
400,000 square feet of commercial space on 37 acres along with 300 townhouses would be huge and dense. The Reserve shopping center on the south side of Clint Moore has 140,000 square feet on 18 acres. Delray Marketplace has 260,000 square feet of commercial space on 32 acres. The documents indicate that Urban Design Kilday Studios is working on this project. They also worked on Delray Marketplace.
Based on past experience with zoning (this author has done some zoning work as an attorney and as clerk for a judge, and also voted on zoning issues as a town board member, all in upstate New York), we suspect that the numbers (299 residential units and 400,000 square feet of commercial space) are a bargaining position and the developers know it will ultimately be reduced to a smaller number.
In the justification statement, the developer argues that the plant is no longer economically sensible as farming nearby has declined dramatically. Most of their farmland is a long distance away and this leads to what they claim is heavy truck traffic on the roads. We’re generally skeptical of developer claims but this one does make sense to us.
Readers can check on the status of the application on the County Zoning active amendments page. As of now no hearing date has been set.
Petition Summary document:
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/PetSum-Map.pdf”]
Justification Statement:
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/3-Justification-Statement.pdf”]
For a related story from May see the Palm Beach Post.