Posted on January - 18 - 2012

GL Homes finds spot for west Boynton charter school; preserve-land plan discontinued

WEST PALM BEACH — The battle to build a charter school on preserve land inside one of the county’s last agricultural enclaves came to an abrupt end Tuesday, after a Sunrise-based homebuilder said it had found a 14-acre site for the project inside one of its future developments.

The announcement by GL Homes means that Palm Beach County commissioners will no longer have to consider a controversial change to the county’s long-term growth plan that would have allowed the school to rise in the 20,500-acre Agricultural Reserve west of Boynton Beach and Delray Beach.

Commissioners last month authorized county planners to start working on the change and were scheduled to hold a public hearing on it later this year. But the seven-member board on Tuesday unanimously agreed to withdraw its request after GL Homes said it found a site for the school within its Amestoy project, near the northwest corner of Boynton Beach Boulevard and Lyons Road.

The county has already approved 785 homes as part of the project, which also sits inside the county’s Agricultural Reserve. Kevin Ratterree, GL Homes’ vice president of land management, said a school could be built on the property without changing the county’s comprehensive growth plan, a blueprint for future growth and development.

This is an alternative way to accommodate the school, Ratterree told the commission.

Critics of the proposed change had argued that it could open up the preserve lands to other development.

Parents living in the unincorporated area west of Boynton Beach have pushed for the charter schools, saying their children are being bused too far because the western area lacks community middle and high schools.

In October the Palm Beach County School Board approved two applications from Pembroke Pines-based Somerset Academy to open charter middle and high schools in the Canyons area, a group of developments between Florida’s Turnpike and Lyons Road, south of Boynton Beach Boulevard, inside the Agricultural Reserve.

Kenneth Lassiter, president of the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations, in November pushed commissioners to consider changing the growth plan to allow the school.

On Tuesday, Lassiter said the group was happy with GL Homes’ proposal. We hope to have a plan to look at very soon, Lassiter told the commission.

Under the plan, GL Homes will ask the county for five changes to the approvals it has received for several projects in the area, including the Amestoy development. If approved, the changes would leave the GL Homes with permission to build 14 fewer homes then they currently have authorization to develop, Ratterree said.

GL Homes plans to sell the 14 acres for the school to the charter’s operator, Ratterree said.

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