After Losing Second Vote In Riviera Beach, D.R. Horton Could Force City’s Hand With Live Local Act Project

The city of Riviera Beach rejected D.R. Horton's plans to build 286 single-family homes on a defunct golf course for the second time in as many years during a hearing last week.

The company said it may use the Live Local Act to proceed with a project anyway.

The vote was a repeat of a 4-1 rejection of the proposal in July 2023. The city council was considering land use and zoning changes that would have advanced D.R. Horton's plan to convert the 64-acre Lone Pine Golf Course into a residential community.

Brian Seymour, a land use lawyer at Gunster representing D.R. Horton, said at the 2023 meeting and last week that the Texas-based homebuilder could seek to leverage Florida’s Live Local Act to force the city’s hand.

“If the rejection comes tonight, there are only two options left — either try a Live Local Act development or leave it as a vacant, fallow piece of property," Seymour said Wednesday, according to The Palm Beach Post.  

D.R. Horton and Seymour declined Bisnow’s requests for comment.

The homebuilder has the property under contract but hasn't finalized the acquisition, public records indicate. The owner is Lone Pine Golf Club Inc., managed by Palm Beach Gardens resident Joseph Gerlach. 

The Live Local Act requires local municipalities to approve projects that have at least 40% of units set aside for workforce or affordable housing without a public hearing.

The law also provides developers with density, height and parking bonuses for projects if they meet certain other conditions. 

In effect, the law has given D.R. Horton an additional avenue to pursue the redevelopment of the site, likely with more units than the proposal residents already fought to block. 

“When the Live Local Act was enacted, they used that as an opportunity,” Shirley Lanier, the Riviera Beach council member whose district includes the golf course, told Bisnow Wednesday. “It was basically giving them another bite at the apple.”

Lanier said the majority of her District 3 constituents opposed the project, especially those in the two communities surrounding the golf course, Lone Pine Estates and Carrington Pines. 

The homeowners associations for the communities submitted letters to city officials opposing the project. 

The Lone Pine Estates letter, which included signatures of dozens of the community’s residents, said they opposed the golf course's redevelopment because it would decrease property values, eliminate green space and worsen storm drainage problems while increasing traffic and crime. 

The community isn’t opposed to redeveloping the now-closed golf course, Lanier said, but residents want to maintain some of the property’s green space as a middle ground.

“The development of that property has to be to the benefit of the city in general,” Lanier said. “It doesn't have to be all green space, but I think there's a compromise.”

D.R. Horton “could have done better” working with the community to get the project approved, Lanier said.

Whether the homebuilder returns to Riviera Beach with a proposal under the Live Local Act remains to be seen, and the city could try to find a loophole to reject the plan anyway.

Tradrick McCoy, the only Riviera Beach council member to vote in favor of the project, told Bisnow that city officials were already exploring potential contingency plans. 

The Live Local Act requires projects to be approved administratively if they are on commercially zoned property, and “there is confusion as to whether or not a golf course is considered, in its plain language, as a commercial property,” McCoy said.

“Our code doesn't exactly align with what the state statute says. Our code refers to the Lone Pines zoning as a recreational-open-space-zoned property,” he said. 

McCoy said he supported D.R. Horton’s proposal primarily because it would add nearly 300 single-family homes to the region as it grapples with a housing affordability crisis. Landowners should also have the right to develop their property as they see fit provided it doesn’t adversely affect the community, he added. 

While he understands the community’s desire to keep the former golf course as green space, McCoy ruled it out as prohibitively expensive for a city with more pressing issues.

While no houses will start popping up on the Lone Pine Golf Course anytime soon, the future of the property is far from certain. 

D.R. Horton could reduce the number of homes it plans to build and return to the city council with another plan, or it could attempt to sidestep their authority altogether with a Live Local Act proposal. The city could try to win county or state funding to keep the property green space, or another developer could step in to start the process all over again.

“Stranger things have happened, and this is politics, so you just cannot call it,” Lanier said. “I don’t know if they’re going to come back, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.”