The Acreage
The Acreage, FL · Events
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Palm Beach Daily News
West Palm yanks lifeline for stalled ‘tent site’ after ‘shenanigans’
The future of a 25-story office and retail complex planned for the so-called “tent site” in downtown West Palm Beach was thrown into uncertainty when city leaders rescinded a vote to extend the deadline for completion. The mayor and city commissioners, sitting as the board of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, voted 5-1 on Nov. 9 to deny the developer’s request for a 17-month extension to complete the West Palm Point project at the corner of Okeechobee Boulevard and South Dixie Highway. The reversal reinstates the original deadline for the project to be completed next summer on the city-owned parcel — a timeline that the developer, a company owned by part-time Palm Beach billionaire Charles Cohen, has said it can’t meet. The turnabout came after city leaders accused Cohen’s company of a new round of “shenanigans” regarding the project’s financing. In September, city officials said, the company had indicated that a new investment group, Lendlease, would inject $350 million of financing into the project. But commissioners this week said they had learned that Lendlease would not be a direct partner in the project after all, prompting them to accuse Cohen’s company of misleading them. Commissioner Christy Fox, whose district includes
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