County greenlights Toll Brothers luxury development on former Cypress Creek golf course

Palm Beach County commissioners for hours witnessed a shattered community. Neighbors turning on neighbors, spilling long-held grudges — all over what to do with an abandoned golf course in suburban Boynton Beach .

The seven elected officials then unanimously approved a luxury development of 152-single single-family homes to be constructed by Pennsylvania-based Toll Brothers. It will be shoehorned inside the 50-year-old Cypress Creek neighborhood off Military Trail and Old Boynton Road.

Commissioners reversed course from five years ago when the county nixed plans for PulteGroup to develop the 121-acre Cypress Creek Country Club site, mostly over traffic concerns .

Adopted Wednesday was a proposal that includes numerous conditions where the county could come in with a stop-work order if requirements — such as environmental mitigation — are not being met.

Scott Backman, a zoning attorney representing Toll Brothers at Wednesday’s hearing, stressed "the nature of these additional conditions that we've been trying to work on in order to provide that additional level of security, not only for obviously the county and all of you, but also for the residents."

Golf course conversions are a sign of the times in a county desperate for housing — even luxury housing — and where neighborhood links are becoming increasingly outdated.

The commission’s 2019 approval of an apartment complex on the old Fountains Country Club in Lake Worth Beach, where dust and construction noise bedeviled residents , was repeatedly referenced at Wednesday’s meeting.

“This is my fourth golf course conversion that I'm going through in my district,” said Commissioner Gregg Weiss, who insisted on the conditions.

Opposition: Cypress Creek land has been poisoned by pesticides and fertilizers

Opponents to the development wore white T-shirts with green lettering that said “I (heart) Cypress Creek.” They told commissioners that the land was poisoned by years of pesticides and fertilizers for golf and years of arsenic and DDT when the property was a dairy farm.

They said they feared further traffic congestion and also increased flooding, because the abandoned golf course works like a sponge for stormwater runoff.

Residents fear not just for their homes, but for their lives, said Julie Nicholas, the secretary for the Cypress Creek Property Owners’ Association . “Please don't let Toll Brothers experiment with our lives,” she told the board.

“We will potentially be swimming in arsenic every single day,” said resident Emily Biancardi. “Have you seen a three-year-old swim in a pool? They swallow water constantly. This can not be acceptable. We are just supposed to hope and pray we don’t get sick?”

Yet, among the roughly 30 people who asked to speak at the meeting, at least a third supported the development. They wore Toll Brothers buttons and said the development would be a boon for the area — though they neglected to say exactly how.

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“Let's lean into Toll Brothers with transparent, good-faith negotiations to benefit all and start to heal our very fractured neighborhood,” resident Linda Diane Buschman said.

Proponents were joined in support of the project by the Palm Beach County’s Planning Commission. Zoning Director Lisa Amara and her staff also urged commissioners to approve the plan.

The Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations also supported the development.

Accusations come to the forefront at a tense meeting

Each side accused the other of lying to commissioners and recalled the past drama of recall elections and years-long squabbles on the Property Owners Association’s board — much of it rooted over the issue of the abandoned golf course.

True Shot LLC owns the one-time golf course. It purchased the property in 2001 for $2.7 million and withstood a lawsuit trying to keep it from selling the property for development. The company’s principal is William Marcacci, who lives in Cypress Creek.

One woman, who would only give her name as Alyssa to commissioners, scathingly attacked the property owner’s association, praised Toll Brothers and claimed she would be in the neighborhood long after many of the elderly opponents of the development had moved on.

Property records showed she was Alyssa Rich and lives across the street from Marcacci.

Another resident, Christine Chavers, told commissioners that developers told COBWRA members that affordable housing under the state’s new Live Local Act would bring 1,200 units to the golf course if Toll Brothers didn’t get approval for its planned luxury community.

“It was wrong to use Live Local and workforce housing as a fear factor,” Chavers said.

The meeting started early Wednesday and by 3:30 p.m., Commissioner Maria Marino appeared worn out by all the sniping. She said the county had no choice but to approve the Toll Brothers’ proposal.

“We do not have the ability to tell private property what they can and can’t do. We will be sued,” said Marino, citing Florida’s Bert J. Harris Jr. Private Property Act of 1995.

Weiss said he trusts Toll Brothers but understands that the serene golf course community of Cypress Creek will be forever erased.

“I know the community is probably very evenly split on this. Some of the animosity, the way folks have talked and dealt with each other, has been unfortunate,” Weiss said.

“My hope and my wish is when this is all done, you all are able to come back together as a wonderful community.”

Marino said she was comforted by the conditions placed on the builder by the county staff.

“Toll Brothers, going forward, knows that they will have many eyes on this project," she said. "They know that there will be many people making sure that the environmental issues are corrected and remediated.”

Nicholas feels that even though opponents lost the vote, they may not have lost the war because of the conditions put on Toll Brothers.

“We got something out of it that will help to protect our community a little bit, more than it would have otherwise,” she said. “But at the end of the day, really, the vote means that we can't rest.”

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This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: County greenlights Toll Brothers luxury development on former Cypress Creek golf course