New apartment buildings augur change in city’s oldest Black neighborhood
The Grand and Flagler Station start welcoming renters in the Northwest Neighborhood just north of Banyan Boulevard.
Over the past 120-plus years, West Palm Beach’s Northwest Neighborhood never has had two apartment buildings as big as the two that are opening within weeks of one another right now.
The Grand, a 309-unit building at Third and Rosemary, opens in May.
Flagler Station, a 94-unit building at Tamarind and Banyan, opened in March and is fully occupied. Both are eight stories.
The Grand is workforce housing backed by investors, with a split of market-rate units and units reserved for people making 80 percent to 140 percent of Area Median Income.
Flagler Station is backed by tax credits, which restricts its renters to earning 30 percent to 80 percent of AMI.
The county’s median income is $90,300.
Both projects received cash infusions from the government as incentives to revitalize a long-downtrodden neighborhood on the edge of a booming downtown while making a dent in skyrocketing rents.
Rents at Flagler Station, built by the Housing Trust Group of Coconut Grove, are lower.
They’re offered on a graduating scale based on a tenant’s income, with rents ranging from $416 to $1,279 for a one-bedroom, $498 to $1,533 for a two-bedroom and $574 to $1,771 three bedrooms.
The Grand offers a greater mix, with one-third of the units priced at market rate and the remaining two-thirds evenly split among those earning 80 percent of AMI, 100 percent and 120 percent.
The units for those in the 80 percent category already are sold out, said Nick Rojo, a partner in Affiliated Development, which raised $85 million, including $10 million from the city, to build The Grand.
On its website, The Grand advertises 592- to 708-square-foot, one-bedroom apartments for $1,380 to $2,355. Two bedrooms, 978 to 1,063 square feet, are listed from $2,995 to $3,165.
Facing Third Street are eight two-story, three-bedroom townhouses, listed at $3,975.
The idea is to create a blend of people with various incomes rather than segregating those with low incomes into a single neighborhood or building, Rojo said on a recent tour of The Grand, which occupies nearly the entire block between Rosemary and Sapodilla avenues and Second and Third streets.
Apartments feature tile floors, ceiling-to-floor sliding-glass windows, quartz countertops and soft-close cabinets and drawers. Many have balconies. The sun-soaked fitness room has a view of the outdoor swimming pool. There’s a Zen room with a massage table, an outdoor fire pit and barbecue grills, a dog park and a six-story parking garage. Leasing information is available at TheGrandWPB.com.
The dreaded G word: Gentrification
The financial investment and the presence of so many new residents in a neighborhood full of empty lots will raise nearby property values, make the neighborhood more amenable to market-rate developers and even boost the city’s $20 million investment in the Sunset Lounge, a rebuilt ballroom and restaurant on Seventh Street, Rojo said.
As more people move in, crime will move out, he predicted.
“What deters crime? It’s activity. When you have daytime and nighttime activity — people in the open patronizing restaurants — the crime is not going to want to be there,” Rojo said.
The Grand’s success will spawn more apartment construction in the historic neighborhood immediately northwest of downtown, he said. That raises the prospect of gentrification, in which longtime property owners will field offers too rich to ignore.
The neighborhood has always been single-family, said Lia Gaines who grew up there. She worries the development opens the floodgates to forcing residents out.
“It’s going to eventually chip away. Development has nowhere to go but north,” she said. “There was nothing done to protect any of those remaining residents from the market. Where do they go?”
One place is Flagler Station, which already is fully rented, said Marketing Director Tatiana Suhr. Leasing information is available at FlaglerStationhtgm.com.
Financing behind the $33 million project included $23.3 million in tax credits from the Florida Housing Finance Corp.
Flagler Station also received $500,000 from the city plus a $75,000 loan; and grants and loans through Palm Beach County topping $850,000. Construction was financed by KeyBank Community Development Lending and Investment.
The Grand’s homage to Cracker Johnson
At The Grand, Affiliated promised the workforce housing in its December 2019 contract with West Palm Beach’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which provided a $9 million grant and $5 million over 13 years in tax refunds. The city’s Housing Department also provided $1 million.
Rojo, who grew up in Palm Beach Gardens and was an investment banker in New York before returning home, said the project’s main source of money comes from police and fire pension funds. Affiliated began assembling the property from 15 owners in 2018.
More Affiliated apartments are on their way. The city has approved The Spruce, a 270-unit building at Spruce Avenue and 24th Street. Through its CRA, the city is providing $2.5 million plus up to $6.1 million in a return on tax payments over 20 years. A third of the units will be reserved for those earning 100 percent of AMI or less.
Aside from the Northwest Neighborhood’s rich history as the home of West Palm Beach’s first Black neighborhood, the site once housed the Florida Bar, owned by a Black entrepreneur of the first half of the 20th century, Cracker Johnson.
Johnson’s bar is recalled by the Historical Society of Palm Beach County as a place where employees wore cut-away dinner jackets, tuxedo trousers, winged-collared dress shirts with studs and cufflinks and bow ties. Johnson also ran a jail segregated for Black residents at Second Street, which forms The Grand’s southern boundary.
In a salute to Johnson, Rojo said the eighth floor will feature a corner unit marked “Janitor’s closet” that will, at the knock on the door and delivery of a spoken password, open into a fully operational speakeasy.
This story was updated with rent information provided by Flagler Station after initial publication.
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