Downtown West Palm Beach

Key Facts

1992

Designed
700 ac.

Project Size
City of West Palm Beach

Client

About Downtown West Palm Beach

The downtown plan for West Palm Beach produced the first municipal form-based code of our time. With the post-WWII growth of Palm Beach County suburbs, this downtown had been largely abandoned by 1992 and needed to be rebuilt. Initial plans for redevelopment as a single-use office park for seventy acres of senselessly cleared historic buildings included a highway fly-over. Residents of surrounding historic neighborhoods urged Mayor Nancy Graham and Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council Director Dan Cary to act to save their city. The charrette plan they commissioned eliminated the need for the fly-over and began many years of successful rebuilding.

The plan focused on supporting the recently completed performing arts center and the renovation of a historic school as a performing arts magnet, with a mix of uses reinforcing an urban structure of neighborhoods and corridors. The results included many new streetscapes, two areas of retail focus– Clematis Street (the historic main street) and City Place (later refreshed as Rosemary Square) — a mixed-use development with new housing at the heart of the downtown on cleared land, and the development of a major convention center with related hotels. The library and city hall were relocated, making room for extensive new public parks along the Lake Worth waterfront.

The downtown plan was followed by DPZ plans for other city sectors, including the pioneering design for a townhouse liner built to screen the convention center parking from the adjacent residential neighborhood.

Development Approach

Reinforce the identity of each neighborhood, district, and corridor
Balance vehicular and pedestrian comfort on downtown streets
Focus retail growth by area and type
Provide a regulatory framework for physical predictability
Encourage housing downtown
Identify sites for future civic buildings

Defining Design Details

Smart Coding: plan & code documents were simple, direct, and succinct.
Common sense: small-scale, incremental growth encouraged.
Legibility: buildings based on type rather than abstract floor-area ratios.
Prioritize form over function: the shaping of the outdoor public realm more important than regulating building use.