Handelsman Family Land Eyed for Live Local Tower in West Palm Beach

A pre-application filed with the city of West Palm Beach lays out a 25-story tower at 215 Fifth Street that would stack 36 workforce-housing rental units below 41 market-rate condos, using Florida’s Live Local Act to bypass local zoning caps. West Palm-based Urban Design Studio and architecture firm Arquitectonica submitted the concept, but the developer behind it has not been identified. The site is owned by entities tied to Marsha Stocker, daughter of the late Palm Beach landlord Burt Handelsman.

Why it matters

The Live Local Act lets a project like this skip municipal zoning review and unlock added density and height as long as at least 40 percent of the residential units serve workforce or affordable tenants. Here, the filing pairs that carve-out directly with for-sale condos rather than an all-rental building, the same structure Related Ross used at its 209 N Sapodilla Avenue project a few blocks away. Stacking condo sales on top of a Live Local base lets a developer capture upside from the market-rate units while still qualifying for the statute’s zoning bypass on the building as a whole.

The numbers

The concept calls for 36 workforce-housing units on the second and third floors, with 41 condo units above, including an 8,500-square-foot penthouse. The fourth floor would hold an amenity deck and pool. The roughly half-acre site near North Flagler Drive and the Intracoastal Waterway last sold in 2005 for $5.9 million to an LLC registered to Stocker, according to property records. It was most recently listed for rent at $60,000 a month before going under contract, and the listing agent declined to comment on the property’s status.

What’s next

Urban Design Studio is set to meet with city staff this week to work through the concept before filing a formal application, so the unit count, condo-to-workforce split and 25-story height could all still change. No developer has surfaced publicly, and it remains unclear whether the Stocker-linked entity has sold or optioned the land. The project would join a growing cluster of Live Local towers in South Florida’s West Palm Beach market, alongside Related Ross’s Sapodilla Avenue project and Jeff Greene’s 25-story tower planned for South Dixie Highway.