Developer tries again to build on former Carefree Theatre site in West Palm Beach

A long-mothballed plan to build apartments, restaurants and spaces for indie films at the former Carefree Theatre site in West Palm Beach is back in play as South Dixie Highway prospers post-pandemic.

New York real estate developer and lifelong cinema fan Charles Cohen bought the first parcels of what is now a combined 1.8 acres between and Flamingo and Cordova roads nearly a decade ago when the historic but hurricane-damaged Carefree was still standing.

It has since been razed, and Cohen’s proposal for the land includes two buildings, six theaters with a total of 600 seats, 58 apartments, a rooftop terrace and a two-level underground garage.

“We are very hopeful this can be done, because this is a tremendous amenity for the city as a whole,” said attorney Brian Seymour, who will represent the project at an April 16 meeting of the City of West Palm Beach’s Planning Board.

But the proposal faces pushback from the neighboring El Cid community, where century-old homes are on the front lines of COVID-triggered growth that has filled South Dixie Highway with shops, boutique grocery stores, and restaurants catering to recent transplants.

Representatives of the El Cid Historic Neighborhood Association say they are pro-development and want something built on Cohen’s vacant lots, but the current design is too tall and too big to be shoehorned onto 1.8 acres abutting a historic district.

Cohen is asking the city to waive 11 rules that include setback restrictions, open space mandates, landscape obligations and a requirement of a minimum of 5 acre for what is being proposed.

Photos: Carefree Theatre in West Palm Beach through the years

“We would love to see something responsibly developed, and we know anything will require a compromise, but we are nowhere close to having something that is compatible to being sandwiched in between two historic neighborhoods,” said Mackey Reed Shaw, the association’s co-president.

The Flamingo Park Historic District is on the west side of South Dixie Highway across from the proposed development.

City of West Palm Beach Commissioner Christina Lambert shares El Cid’s concerns, which include an increase in traffic on an already congested South Dixie Highway.

“I really think the project is too large and changes the character of the neighborhood,” said Lambert, who represents communities south of downtown. “There is definitely a resurgence along South Dixie, and we would love to see this be something that benefits the neighborhood and the city, but it needs to be contextually appropriate.”

West Palm Beach has grown rapidly since the pandemic after COVID restrictions in other states pushed a migration to Florida. Some transplants established permanent residency, enjoying the warm climate and the state’s lack of income tax.

Pandemic-triggered growing pains in West Palm Beach

The tri-county area of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade saw the 10th highest population gain of metro areas nationwide between April 2020 and July 2023, adding about 44,000 people, according to population estimates released by the Census Bureau in March.

That overall gain included a loss of about 8,800 residents in Miami-Dade County while Palm Beach County grew by 39,520.

Statewide, Florida's population increased by more than one million between 2020 and 2023.

At the same time, New York's Related Cos., which is led by Miami Dolphins owner and Palm Beach resident Stephen Ross, began a building spree of upscale office towers and residential developments that helped lure financial firms to West Palm Beach, earning the city the nickname “Wall Street South.”

Wealth moves to Palm Beach County: West Palm and Palm Beach rank in top 5 as cities with fastest growth in millionaires

Reed Shaw moved to El Cid in 2021 and said the 100-year-old community of Mediterranean Revival and mission-style homes is experiencing a transformation that includes the addition of more young families. That’s one reason why she would like the Carefree development downsized.

“We are concerned about the crowds it will bring when we have many small children in the neighborhood now,” she said.

The current plan is already a scaled-down version from the original 2016 concept, which wanted to build to 96 feet high. In 2020, the city’s planning board approved a proposal for one building that would rise to 72 feet and another to 58 feet. That plan was withdrawn in January 2021 when the fate of movie theaters after the pandemic was uncertain.

Seymour said the plan to be presented Tuesday has had several more feet shaved off each building, although the Flamingo building, which will house the six theaters and restaurants at the corner of Flamingo Drive and South Dixie, will still be five stories tall. The Cordova building is planned for four stories.

Other changes made in the hope of wooing El Cid include a traffic design that will direct exiting cars onto Dixie Highway away from the neighborhood, the promise to hire people to control the flow of cars during peak times or special events, a reduced rooftop terrace area, a pledge of no parties or special events on the rooftop after 10 p.m., and an increase in landscaping to buffer homes from the buildings.

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On the east side of the property, Seymour said they would plant 42 trees instead of the required 12. On Cordova Road, he said they are proposing 18 trees instead of the eight required. He said the developer has also committed to construction that doesn’t require the hammering of pilings into the ground that could damage fragile historic homes.

“There will be more cars on the road, and that happens with every new project,” Seymour said. “But we are trying to make this a walkable amenity.”

West Palm's old Carefree Theatre started life as an ice cream parlor

The Carefree opened in 1939 as an ice cream parlor and coin laundry. It became a theater in 1947, hosting musicians including B.B. King, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Tori Amos, Los Lobos, the Neville Brothers, the Cowboy Junkies and John Mayer.

Art films were also a staple of the Carefree, as were visits from comedians, including Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Bill Hicks, Bill Maher and Drew Carey.

Smaller theaters geared toward art, indie and foreign films

The six screening rooms proposed for the new project will be smaller than a typical theater that shows Hollywood blockbuster films, Seymour said. Two rooms would have 50 seats, two would have 100 seats and two would have 150 seats.

Karen Steele, a former president of the El Cid Historic Neighborhood Association who has lived in the community for 37 years, said the original Carefree had its own problems with a lack of parking, and she fears a parking free-for-all with the new project.

“The concern from the beginning is why do they need theaters with 600 seats?” Steele said. “It’s too big, it’s too intrusive, it towers over everything in our community.”

Cohen, whose net worth is $3 billion according to Forbes, owns the Design Center of the Americas, an 800,000-square-foot furniture and accessories showroom in Dania Beach. His Cohen Brothers Realty Corp. also owns other design centers and office high-rises in New York, Houston and California.

The South Florida Business Journal reported this month that an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group filed a lawsuit in New York alleging Cohen had defaulted on $533.6 million in loans on several properties including the Design Center of the Americas. Seymour said he believes settlement negotiations are underway in the suit. Regardless, the legal action is unrelated to Cohen's West Palm Beach developments and will not impact them, Seymour said.

Cohen also won approval from West Palm Beach in 2022 for a 23-story office tower and 10-story parking garage on the so-called “tent site” at Okeechobee Boulevard and South Dixie Highway. South Florida Water Management District records show permitting for the project, called West Palm Point, is ongoing.

Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's 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: West Palm Beach Carefree site plan: Theaters, apartments, restaurants