BH Group, Related Group Cleared to Close on WPB Transit Village Site
A years-long fight over the sale price of a 6.6-acre county parcel next to West Palm Beach's transit hub is over, unlocking a 1.3 million-square-foot site for roughly 1,000 units.
BH Group and Related Group are cleared to close on Palm Beach County’s Transit Village site after a Palm Beach County circuit judge signed off on an arbitrator’s award, ending a fight over the sale price that had stalled the deal for more than two years. Judge Caryn Siperstein adopted retired Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath’s arbitration ruling as her final judgment in the case, according to The Real Deal. The developers plan a transit-oriented project of roughly 1.3 million square feet with nearly 1,000 residential units on the 6.6-acre county parcel at 150 Clearwater Drive in downtown West Palm Beach, next to the Intermodal Transit Center where Amtrak, Tri-Rail, the downtown trolley and Greyhound all stop.
Why it matters
Transit Village LLC, the developers’ affiliate, sued Palm Beach County in 2024 after the county tried to reprice the land based on a fresh appraisal instead of honoring a 2012 contract price. That is the risk every developer holding an old option or ground lease on public land faces once a market runs up, and it is the reason this closing matters beyond one site: it shows an arbitrator, not a commission vote, is what finally forced a resolution. For anyone assembling a deal on county or municipal land in South Florida, the lesson is to price in the years an appraisal dispute can add before a shovel ever moves.
The numbers
The original 2012 contract set the price at $3.6 million for the 6.6-acre site. The county’s own appraisal put the land’s value at $75 million before cost deductions, netting to $42 million after backing out roughly $33 million in site and infrastructure costs, the gap that drove the lawsuit. Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi’s Globe Invest is an investor in the project alongside Palm Beach County developer Michael Masanoff, who is a partner.
What’s next
The arbitration award requires each side to get the property reappraised within six months of the scheduled closing and to negotiate in good faith if those numbers diverge, with the county also obligated to help the developers work out any remaining Federal Transit Administration funding conditions tied to the land. No closing date has been made public. Once the sale closes, the next milestone to watch is whether BH Group and Related Group file a formal site plan for the 1.3 million-square-foot program, which would set the first hard construction timeline for a project that has been in planning for more than a decade.