Judge Rules Commission Was Wrong To Reject Warehouses At Palm Beach Raceway

The Palm Beach County Commission’s decision to deny warehouse development on the site of the former Palm Beach International Raceway was unreasonable, a special magistrate judge ruled Tuesday. 

The nonbinding decision gives the commission until June 16 to reconsider the issue of whether to approve a plan from the property’s owner, IRG Sports & Entertainment, to build 2.1M SF of warehouses on the 175-acre redevelopment site at 17047 Beeline Highway west of Jupiter, the Palm Beach Post reports.

Special Magistrate Bram Canter wrote in his decision that the proposed warehouse is allowable at the site under the Commercial Recreation/Industrial future land use designation. He said the owners met the “changed conditions” requirement to replace the racetrack with warehouses by stating that the region’s population growth and an increase in online shopping has created a need for large industrial sites in the region.

The ruling comes after more than a year of debate and one failed sale of the site, which first opened in 1964 as Moroso Motorsports Park. Dozens of racing fans and residents concerned about traffic spoke out against the project at the January commission meeting where the application was ultimately denied, WPBF News reported.

In a resolution, the commission cited a failure to show that traffic requirements and safety measures were met in its denial of the plan. But Canter ruled that the commission didn’t articulate how the development failed to meet those traffic and safety requirements.

IRG Sports, a subsidiary of global investment firm Sixth Street, purchased the raceway in 2015 and operated the track before shutting it down last April. It proposed a site plan to the commission that would replace the track with 2.1M SF of industrial space across four warehouses, with 1,445 parking spaces, 415 truck loading spaces and 450 tractor-trailer parking spaces, the South Florida Business Journal reported.

The track’s closure sparked an outcry in the community, with racing enthusiasts descending on commission meetings to voice their opposition to the redevelopment plan and the rapper Pitbull, a Miami native, voicing his support for saving the track.

Seth Behn, an attorney for property owners IRG Sports, told the Palm Beach Post that the track had been losing millions of dollars for years despite capital investments to improve the site. IRG Sports decided to sell the site, he said, after it tapped CBRE to conduct a site analysis that ended in a recommendation for industrial redevelopment. 

In July, Portman Industrial backed out of a deal to buy the property for redevelopment, the South Florida Business Journal reported, as county officials were still considering approval of the site plan. The site was put back on the market with CBRE Vice Chairman Jose Lobón, per the SFBJ, and its current status is unclear. Lobón didn’t immediately respond to Bisnow’s request for comment.

After the sale fell through, Sixth Street released a statement that reiterated its intention to forge ahead on the project. 

“We want to be clear that the future of the property remains the same: It will be developed for logistics and distribution use, with a process underway to choose a new developer,” the statement said. “The track is closed and will not be reopening. When completed, the development will provide much-needed logistics infrastructure, a stronger commercial tax base and a significant increase in employment opportunities.”

In February, IRG Sports appealed the commission’s decision to deny the development application. Behn told the Palm Beach Post that IRG Sports was seeking a “dispassionate third party” to determine if the owner was “inordinately burdened” by the commission’s decision.

On Tuesday, Canter agreed, writing that the commission’s decision to deny the application unfairly burdened the owner’s use of the property and that the county shouldn’t apply abandonment standards differently than in the past.

“The unspoken proposition in the statements made by members of the public in this matter is that the Owners must revive and operate the Raceway or get someone else to do it,” Canter wrote, according to the Palm Beach Post. “However, even a new owner cannot be forced to operate the racetrack. Property owners are free to not use their properties.”