By Brian Biggane
After sitting empty for the past 20 years, a group of Delray Beach lots on North Federal Highway abutting Gulf Stream’s Place Au Soleil community will be the site of 47 new townhomes.
The Delray Beach City Commission approved the project proposed by Ultra Luxury Townhomes LLC by a 3-1 vote at its Aug. 18 meeting, after agreeing to reconsider the project that died on a 2-2 vote in July.
Mayor Tom Carney, who previously was involved with the project and whose brother has an investment in the project, recused himself from the votes.
Commissioner Tom Markert, who opposed the reconsideration, ended up being the swing vote for approval, while Commissioner Juli Casale, who cast the deciding vote to allow the project to be reconsidered, ended up voting against it again.
Commissioners Angela Burns and Judy Mollica supported the project in both votes.
The project, which involves 39 two-story structures and eight that will rise three stories, will be adjacent to Place Au Soleil, the only part of Gulf Stream on the western side of the Intracoastal Waterway. The property sits just north of a golf cart business on the east side of the highway.
Commissioners have strived for years to fill that space with a commercial property, but presenting attorney Neil Schiller argued that national studies have shown that the presence of a Walmart nearby is a significant deterrent to commercial development. Schiller said the Walmart at Federal Highway and Gulfstream Boulevard is just 0.29 miles from the property.
In November 2022, an attempt to rezone the property from general commercial to automotive commercial to house a proposed auto dealership was rejected by the commission.
The city’s Planning and Zoning Board in May recommended approval of the four waivers proposed by Ultra Luxury only to have the commission reject that proposal at its July 14 meeting. Further changes made include curbing the sidewalks, coloring them for a visual separation, and providing speed bumps.
Schiller’s team stated there is precedent for the residential project on North Federal since the commission approved a similar one known as the Tropics for the west side of North Federal just south of Ultra Luxury’s lots. While that project was approved in August 2024, the land has yet to be cleared.
Among those attending the meeting and offering support was Gulf Stream Town Manager Trey Nazzaro, who said his Town Commission passed a resolution in support of the project at its previous meeting and asked him to convey that support.
“We believe it is consistent with the area, beneficial to our Place Au Soleil homeowners, and a few of them are here to offer their support,” Nazzaro said.
Nazzaro said the town had previously opposed the petition to rezone the property as automotive commercial because that wasn’t consistent with its homeowners’ wishes.
“We voiced very strong opposition and believed it made an impact,” he said.
Neal de Jesus, who said he represented a former owner of the property, said he and the owner previously had an offer to sell the property to developers who wanted to fill it with a strip mall but decided against it.
“If we developed a strip mall there, with an estimated 15-18 units,” that would mean 15-18 dumpsters behind them, he said. “Knowing the city allows those dumpsters to be picked up at 6 a.m. seven days a week, that was just the wrong thing to do. So, in consultation with the owner, we decided it wouldn’t be right, so we decided to sell the property to the current owners.”
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