Retail, Apartments, Offices & Restaurants Coming to Wellington

WELLINGTON — A project on a scale not seen in Wellington in more than a decade is about to become reality. Lotis, a mixed-use project on the west side of State Road 7 north of Wellington Regional Medical Center, received unanimous approval from Wellington’s council Tuesday night for land use and zoning on 10 of its 64 acres.

More importantly, the council voted unanimously to approve the project’s master plan, the road map for how it will be built and which uses will go on which pieces of the overall property.

The site is a former shell rock mine, with a manmade lake on its west side where crews for decades have dredged up the material. Development projects have been pitched there over the years but none was successful — until Lotis.

An 18-acre lake sits on the west side of the property being proposed for Lotis, a mixed-use project that would be on the west side of State Road 7 just north of Wellington Regional Medical Center in Wellingto. GREG LOVETT / THE PALM BEACH POST

Among the uses approved for the property:

49,000 square feet of combined restaurant and retail space
A 2,500-square-foot bank with a drive-thru
40,000 square feet of medical office space
16,700 square feet of professional and general office space
191 multi-family units
A congregate-living facility with 150 independent-living units and 110 assisted-living beds
A day care center for up to 210 children
28.4 acres of open space, including the existing 18-acre lake
Cypress preserve with a boardwalk
Dog park
Greenway around the lake with a multi-use path, benches and fitness stations

With its master plan approved, developer Lotis Wellington will present its site plan to village staff for approval. That will lay out more specifically the plans for the property. Lotis’ architecture will need to be approved by Wellington’s Architectural Review Board.

The project is broken into pods that will be completed in three phases, developer John Markey of Lotis Wellington and project agent Brian Terry of Insite Studio said. The first phase includes the pods closest to State Road 7, which contain the retail and restaurant uses.

While Markey declined at Tuesday night’s meeting to name some of the companies that have signed onto the project, citing confidentiality agreements, he said them at the Planning, Zoning and Adjustment Board’s Oct. 14 meeting.

This rendering shows the proposed Lotis development in Wellington, looking toward the northwest.

Restaurants Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Lazy Dog Cafe signed letters of intent, Markey told the planning board. TD Bank is slated to move in and the footprint proposed to the village on the site plan is the company’s design, Markey said at the time.

Council members said they appreciated the project’s creativity and thoughtful design.

“When it comes to mixed use, the idea is different,” Mayor Anne Gerwig said. “It is a different concept and we lack that within this village.”

She noted that Lotis’ planners followed a principle that suggests builders go higher in favor of green space, and that the higher apartment buildings are closer to State Road 7.

“I actually really like this plan because of that portion of it,” Gerwig said.

Councilman Michael Drahos generally has opposed multifamily residential projects, but in this instance he supports it.

“But it’s because I think it’s a smart plan,” Drahos said.

Traffic and signal

As part of Wellington’s conditions of approving Lotis, Markey’s team must build a traffic signal at the project’s access point onto State Road 7.

Several residents of the nearby Black Diamond neighborhood told the council Tuesday night they were concerned Lotis will increase congestion and make it more difficult for them to navigate the road.

Wellington Planning, Zoning and Building Director Tim Stillings said the new traffic signal’s connection to Wellington Regional Medical Center will allow traffic from the hospital and surrounding offices to go north on State Road 7 without having to first go south and then make a U-turn at Forest Hill Boulevard.

The new traffic signal will take some of the pressure off the intersection of State Road 7 and Forest Hill Boulevard — one of the busiest intersections in the county, Stillings said.

Facing opposition

Lotis faced some opposition from neighbors, including residents of Black Diamond, a single-family home development to the northwest.

Black Diamond residents expressed concerns about noise, safety and loss of green space. Initially, some Wellington officials believed Black Diamond residents may have confused Lotis with the property to the north, which is owned by a group called 441 Partners and is not subject to development as part of Lotis.

The 441 Partners property sits directly east of some Black Diamond homes, while Lotis is southeast and does not directly abut Black Diamond houses, but instead is separated by Black Diamond’s natural area on its southeast corner.

Since hearing the concerns from Black Diamond residents, Markey and his team made some changes to assuage their fears. That includes a fence running along the entire north and west sides of Lotis, which will be landscaped with trees and hedges, he said.

Early on in the approval process, some Black Diamond residents also said they were worried Lotis would damage the environment and eliminate green space. Wellington staff and Terry said the land had been developed and what vegetation is there is largely invasive.

A cypress preserve on the south side of Lotis is being maintained and incorporated into the project’s design, Terry said.

‘Synergy’ with hospital

Lotis has gained the support of Wellington Regional Medical Center’s leadership, developers told the council.

In a letter to Markey, Wellington Regional CEO Pam Tahan said a proposed connection between the two properties and the new traffic signal on State Road 7 “are welcomed and appreciated.”

A north-south connection will be built between Lotis and Wellington Regional’s northern edge, plans show.

“There’s a lot of synergy between the hospital’s interests and our own,” Markey said.

Both the day care and multi-family homes could be appealing to Wellington Regional employees, council members said. Drahos suggested the assisted-living facility will be an attractive location considering its proximity to the hospital.

Few pieces of property left

The Lotis site is one of the last large pieces of undeveloped land along State Road 7 in Wellington.

One of the remaining properties is about 56 acres, sits directly north of Lotis and is owned by 441 Partners.

The other is owned by Wellington: The roughly 66-acre K-Park property on the southwest corner of Stribling Way and State Road 7.

The village leases that land to an organic farm, but over the years a number of projects have been proposed, including assisted living, multifamily homes or a park.

It has been more than a decade since a project on the scale of Lotis has been built in Wellington.

Wellington Growth Management Director Bob Basehart said the closest a project has come to the same scale as Lotis was a concept that could have developed part of the International Polo Club Palm Beach.

“But even that paled,” Basehart said.

In the past 20 years, projects developed in Wellington have focused on either residential or commercial.

Demand for commercial

Is the demand there? Basehart said yes.

“I think Wellington is underserved commercially,” he said.

Retail demand is based on demographics: How many households there are, and how much those households make, he said.

“We’re not a high-density area, but we have an inordinate amount of buying power,” Basehart said.

In development, a general rule of thumb is to have 4% to 6% of that development be commercial, he said. When Wellington first was planned, only about 2% of the community was commercial, Basehart said.

“That would take care of the community-level needs,” he said — grocery stores, gas stations, personal services.

Businesses considered more regional in nature, including big-box stores, were not included, he said.

And as Wellington continued to grow with more developments, those were largely residential, Basehart said.

He pointed to the original “four corners” of planned commercial development in Wellington: the intersections of Greenview Shores Boulevard and Wellington Trace, Forest Hill Boulevard and Wellington Trace, South Shore and Forest Hill boulevards, and South Shore and Greenview Shores boulevards.

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More: Lotis in Wellington: Project would bring restaurants, retail, senior living to 64 acres

Retail, Apartments, Offices & Restaurants Coming to Wellington

SOURCE: The Palm Beach Post