Rybak Pitches 25-Story Live Local Tower in West Palm Beach

Rybak Development, a Brooklyn-based multifamily builder, has submitted designs to the City of West Palm Beach for a 25-story, 262-unit apartment tower at 534 Datura Street, using Florida’s Live Local Act to build more than double the height the site’s own zoning allows. The half-acre parcel, two blocks from CityPlace, is zoned QBD-10, which caps new construction at 10 stories or 155 feet, whichever is less, according to the city’s code of ordinances.

Why it matters

The Live Local Act lets a residential project preempt a city’s density and height limits, with no rezoning and no discretionary commission vote, as long as the developer sets aside a minimum share of units as affordable and the project sits on land zoned for commercial, industrial or mixed use. Rybak’s filing is a clean read of how far that trade goes in downtown West Palm Beach: a site capped at 10 stories under the South Florida market’s zoning code can pencil a 25-story tower once the affordability threshold is met. For any developer eyeing an underused commercial parcel nearby, this is the specific ratio the city has to accept rather than negotiate.

The numbers

The design calls for 262 rental units across 25 stories, with 40 percent of units reserved as affordable and 60 percent at market rate, the split state law requires to unlock the Act’s density and height preemption. The site currently holds the four-story Colonial Assisted Living nursing home, owned by Fort Lauderdale-based Gold Standard of Care LLC, which paid $3.1 million for the half-acre lot in 2009 and carries an assessed value of roughly $4.16 million today. Brooklyn-based IMC Architecture is designing the tower, with Vero Beach-based Native Bloom handling landscape architecture.

What’s next

The project is still in the pre-application stage, meaning unit count, height and design could shift before Rybak files a formal site plan application with the city. Because Live Local Act projects bypass the standard rezoning and commission-hearing process, the next real checkpoint is administrative site plan review rather than a public vote, and there is no timeline yet for that filing.