Jeff Greene Plans 25-Story Live Local Tower in West Palm Beach

Billionaire investor Jeff Greene wants to put a 25-story apartment tower on South Dixie Highway in downtown West Palm Beach, his first project to use Florida’s Live Local Act. The plan, brought to the city’s Plans and Plats Review Committee in May, combines 120 South Dixie Highway with three adjoining Datura Street parcels into a single site for 366 apartments, including 148 units set aside as workforce housing. Architecture firm Carlo Ratti Associati and prefab specialist Nexus Systems designed the tower around a mass-timber frame, which would make it the tallest mass-timber building in Florida if it is built as proposed.

Why it matters

The site sits in West Palm Beach’s Clematis Waterfront District, which caps buildings at 10 stories or 128 feet under the city’s own code. Greene’s design runs roughly two and a half times that height. The Live Local Act lets a qualifying project skip that local cap, along with the rezoning and city commission vote a request of this size would normally require, as long as at least 40 percent of the units serve renters earning up to 120 percent of area median income. A separate city pre-application filing covering part of the assemblage, at 325 Datura Street, lists the project under Section 94-551 of the city’s Live Local ordinance, confirming staff are reviewing it on the statute’s administrative track rather than a public hearing. For developers watching how far the law stretches in a waterfront district built for midrise buildings, Greene’s filing is a live test case.

The numbers

Greene’s team is proposing 25 stories against a 10-story, 128-foot base allowance in the CWD zoning district. The 366-apartment building would set aside 148 units, or 40 percent, for workforce tenants earning up to 120 percent of area median income, with the remaining 218 units renting at market rate. The assemblage spans four parcels: 120 South Dixie Highway and 321, 324, 325 and 333 Datura Street. Two facades of a 111-year-old former fire station on the site would be preserved in the design.

What’s next

The Plans and Plats Review Committee heard the pre-application on May 14. Because Live Local qualification routes the project through administrative site plan review instead of a commission vote, Greene’s team can move toward a formal site plan submittal without a rezoning fight, though city staff still have to sign off on design and infrastructure before permits issue. No construction date has been set, and the proposed mass-timber system has not been built at this height in Florida, a variable that could shape the review timeline as engineering and code analysis proceed.