Royal Palm Beach's flagship parks project anything but common

By ANGIE FRANCALANCIA
Neighborhood News Group
Posted Oct. 6, 2011

ROYAL PALM BEACH — Rolling hills rising 14 feet above the landscape, large winding lakes and a central 3-story sporting center will soon combine to make Royal Palm Beach Commons the place to gather for leisure and community activities.

Construction began earlier this year on the second phase of Royal Palm Beach’s own grand leisure space at Royal Palm Beach and Poinciana boulevards. Once an antiquated, flat golf course built in the late 1950s to help attract buyers to new South Florida homes in Royal Palm Beach and The Acreage, Royal Palm Beach is transforming it into its equivalent of New York’s Central Park. It will open next summer.

“We’re pushing to have our Fourth of July celebration there,” Mayor Matty Mattioli said. “When it’s finished, there’s going to be gazebos around the lake so you can get out of the sun, a great lawn. The building is going to be a 3-story building, and it will be available for rentals and weddings.”

Royal Palm Beach bought the shuttered 162-acre course for about $4.5 million in 2005, about six months after it had been closed, and then designed it to be the village’s primary public gathering place. The entire project is expected to cost about $18 million.

“We’ve worked over a long period of time to make this happen,” Royal Palm Beach Engineer Chris Marsh said. “We were fortunate enough to have the funding.” The first phase, which encompassed digging the lakes and shaping the land, was completed about a year ago, he said.

Digging lakes and creating oversized berms provides the surrounding homes with privacy and gives the land its focal points, said Royal Palm Beach Project Engineer Brett A. Johnson.

The village will extend Poinciana Boulevard to be the main entrance into Royal Palm Beach Commons. But to get the whole scope of the space, one must go inside. With 162 acres, Royal Palm Beach Commons will be by far the largest public space in the village, far surpassing the size of any other of its parks. It’s a little larger than twice the size of Seminole Palms Park off Lamstein Lane.

The design is a melding of active and passive recreation with plenty of open spaces for family picnics or Frisbee throwing, lakes for kayaking and a driving range and practice putting green.

At one time, Royal Palm Beach planned to keep a linear 9-hole golf course on the edge of the property nearest the homes, allowing adjacent homes to remain on a golf course as they had been for decades. But there isn’t the budget to construct and maintain golf greens, Johnson said.

In addition, the village didn’t want to bring competition to other area golf courses. The areas will be shaped like golf greens, but maintained simply as green areas, Johnson said.

Poinciana Boulevard will provide the entrance to the property just south of the Harvin building, bisecting the property diagonally. On the south side of the road will be the 10-acre Great Lawn area and the majority of the site’s 20 acres of lakes.

The focal point is the 3-story 10,000-square foot sporting center overlooking the Great Lawn that juts into the lakes. From the third floor of the octagonal building, people can view the entire park. While the bottom floor will serve as a storage and rental space for kayaks and other gear, the second and third floors are designed so they can be rented for banquets, weddings and other gatherings.

On one side of the building will be a large brick paver area surrounded by interactive fountains “probably twice the size of the one at Veterans Park,” Village Engineer Chris Marsh said. And on the opposite side facing the Great Lawn will be a gathering space called the banquet garden that will hold about 100 people under open fabric shade structures, he said.

For now, the second phase is the final phase for Royal Palm Beach. But Royal Palm Beach Commons holds the possibility of more in the future.

Royal Palm Beach leaders always anticipated working with other agencies who could provide facilities like a senior center, an arts center or a Boys and Girls Club on parts of the land.

Royal Palm Beach is working with a consultant to study whether the village should make 10 acres at the entrance to the property available for senior housing, Village Manager Ray Liggins said.

There will be two public meetings to gather information from the community, one on Oct. 12 and one on Nov. 9, each from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Royal Palm Beach Cultural Center.