Riviera Beach is rapidly transforming, with huge projects like its marina, its police headquarters and its $400 million water treatment facility in various stages of approval and redevelopment.
But a nearly 64-acre patch of land along North Military Trail, just inside the city’s border with West Palm Beach and across from the Rapids Waterpark, has sat for years as an opportunity and, increasingly, as a blight.
The land was once the Lone Pine Golf Course, an expansive, low-cost course where beginning golfers and weekend duffers got in their cuts. For the last three years, however, the former course has sat fallow, its grass browned in the hot sun and dotted occasionally with wind-blown plastic bottles or bags.
The Gerlach family that owned the course shut it down in 2023, saying it was not financially feasible to keep it open. The family struck a deal to sell the land to builder D.R. Horton, which wanted to put housing on it.
Plans for building houses atop golf course near West Palm Beach met with opposition
That deal, however, appears to have been contingent on the builder getting the land rezoned to residential from recreational. Twice, the Riviera Beach City Council rejected plans to change the zoning so the housing plan could advance.
Property and business records show the course is still owned by the Lone Pine Golf Club Inc., which lists Gerlach family members as officers.
Residents of nearby Lone Pine Estates complained that new housing in that location would exacerbate flooding and traffic problems. They also chafed at the loss of green space, showing up in force at council meetings to tell their elected representatives that they bought in that location in part because they were buying into a golf course community.
It’s not clear now what will happen with the former course, which is in the council district of Chairperson Shirley Lanier.
Lanier was among those who voted against plans to put housing on the course. She did not respond to a call and email seeking comment on what she would support on a large, potentially key tract of land in the city.
Three years ago, Douglas Lawson, then-council chairman and now the city’s mayor, voted against D.R. Horton’s building plans at Lone Pine.
“We still have to figure out what we’re going to do with that parcel,” he said.
That figuring out appears to be ongoing.
“There are no updates related to the land at the former Lone Pine Golf Course,” a spokesperson for the city said.
Wayne Washington is a journalist covering education and Riviera Beach development for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at wwashington@pbpost.com. Help support our work; subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Closed, neglected, what’s next for golf course near West Palm Beach?
Reporting by Wayne Washington, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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