Nearly an entire block has been cleared on the periphery of a West Palm Beach industrial area for 30 luxury townhomes as developers continue to invest in neighborhoods near downtown.
NDT Development, which is building the hip Nora dining and entertainment district in West Palm Beach, paid about $3.46 million for six lots on Nottingham Boulevard in 2021 with plans to build rental townhomes.
Now, homebuilder PulteGroup is expected to purchase the combined 1.61 acres west of Dixie Highway for the construction of the Nottingham Townhomes — 3-story homes designed in the style of “new urbanism” with the front doors and porches facing the street and garages in back along an interior road that runs through the four-building community.
“All of the ugly stuff that the neighbors don’t want to see, your garage door open, your garbage, all of that gets hidden,” said attorney Harvey Oyer during a city meeting in February where he represented the project. “It’s a great design espoused by every school of new urbanism but one that our city code never contemplated.”
Oyer requested the project be allowed changes to five code rules to accommodate the design, including setbacks from the street and landscaping requirements. The city’s Zoning Board of Appeals unanimously granted the variances at the Feb. 6 meeting.
The townhomes are planned for an area west of Dixie Highway and south of Southern Boulevard in the 400 block of Nottingham that formerly was vacant lots, a small single-story apartment complex and single-family homes. It is just east of the FEC railroad tracks and Georgia Avenue, which is an industrial area of World War II-era Quonset huts, furniture restoration shops, auto mechanics and flooring stores.
But Georgia Avenue is undergoing a refinement with an influx of trendy restaurants, high-end boutiques and interior designers such as the celebrated Meg Braff, who bought and remodeled a former print shop on Georgia Avenue to showcase her signature wallpaper and fabrics.
“Over the past seven years the development and changes in West Palm Beach have been amazing and this is a natural progression,” said Realtor Nicholas Grodzicki, who is listing a new construction home on Nottingham Boulevard for $1.75 million. “They are getting that kind of money north of Southern and west of Dixie in Flamingo Park, so why not south of Southern and west of Dixie.”
Flamingo Park is a celebrated historic district of 1920s-era homes south of downtown West Palm Beach where a new construction house sold in June for $3.73 million.
Grodzicki called the builder of the 3,100-square-foot home he’s listing at 770 Nottingham a visionary for being one of the first to construct a modern single-family home in an area dominated by a mix of aging modest houses mostly under 1,800 square feet
“It’s east of I-95, and generally, new construction is selling at $1,000 to $1,200 per square foot. We’re priced about half of that,” Grodzicki said.
Pulte declined to comment on the Nottingham Townhomes, including the estimated price to purchase one. NDT Development is doing infrastructure work at the site. Pulte is the expected to buy the land after that is completed and build the townhomes.
A design plan submitted to the city says the townhomes will incorporate “historical features that early settlers used for heat relief.” That includes deep first-floor porches and wide porch overhangs.
Mae Ferguson, a Realtor with Serhant, said the location of the planned townhomes on Nottingham has many of the same benefits offered in the popular south of Southern Boulevard, or SoSo, community, which is largely considered to be east of Dixie Highway.
“You are right there on Southern, you have Phipps Park, you can walk to restaurants, to Antique Row and you are just over the bridge from the beach,” she said noting the continued investment in West Palm Beach. “We have all these really smart people who know what they are doing and they believe in West Palm.”
Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate, weather, and the environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: New townhomes planned near downtown West Palm Beach on land bought by Nora developers
Reporting by Kimberly Miller, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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