A Homebuilder Is Exploring Homes on Village Golf Club in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, Under a New State Law
Staff in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, sat down with 13th Floor Homes about redeveloping the 174-acre Village Golf Club under Florida’s Infill Redevelopment Act. No application, home count, or sale is public, and eligibility remains unestablished.
Village staff in Royal Palm Beach, a Palm Beach County village in Florida west of West Palm Beach, recently sat down with homebuilder 13th Floor Homes to discuss redeveloping the 174-acre Village Golf Club, a public 18-hole course. The conversation turns on Florida’s new Infill Redevelopment Act, a statute that obliges local governments to approve qualifying residential projects administratively, without rezoning or a council vote, the Town-Crier reported on Oct. 16. No application, home count, or sale has been made public.
Codified at Section 163.2525, Florida Statutes, Senate Bill 1434 took effect May 21, 2026, as Wellington's explainer outlines. The measure reaches only counties that count more than 1.475 million residents and at least 15 municipalities, a threshold Palm Beach County clears. It does not sweep in every golf course or every idle parcel. Coverage is limited to environmentally impacted land: a tract of at least five acres adjoining residentially zoned property where a Phase II environmental assessment identified a contaminant above residential cleanup levels, or that lies inside a designated brownfield area. On a qualifying site, the local government must permit homes and clear the project administratively, at a density no higher than the lower of the average of adjacent residential zoning districts or 25 units per acre.
Recreational land, which the statute defines to include a former golf course, carries further requirements when single-family homes ring it on all sides. The developer must demonstrate 12 consecutive months of non-use, pay double the parks and recreation impact fee, and give neighbors, through certified notice, 90 days to purchase the land as open space. Whether Village Golf Club meets the criteria has not been established, and no public source indicates a Phase II finding or brownfield designation. The course remains in recreational use, leaving the non-use test as the open question.
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Village Manager Ray Liggins told the paper that developers could invoke the law to build up to about 10 units per acre without public hearings, his own estimate. Of the state’s approach, he said: “[The state's] decision that Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties do not need open, successful golf courses, with no public hearings, is inconsistent with everything that I was to understand with development in Florida.” Mayor Jeff Hmara pointed to traffic, already a problem on Okeechobee Boulevard, and said, “We do not see this as desirable,” while acknowledging the act is the law. Neighbors have launched a petition to preserve the green space, aiming for 500 signatures and holding more than 200 at the time of the story. Barbi Rizzo, a 25-year resident who lives next to the course, said current residents’ concerns should come first.
This is not 13th Floor’s first pass at the property. In 2018 the Broward County builder advanced a project called Village Green: 250 townhomes or villas and 200 single-family homes on the southern half of the course. Residents filled the old village hall to oppose it, and the plan never advanced. The course is still privately owned and open to the public.
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A shuttered course nearby supplies the first local test. In Wellington, BH Group bought the Polo West Golf Course, about 150.5 acres, for $20.8 million after settling litigation with seller Glenn Straub, The Real Deal reported, and the South Florida Business Journal reported that GL Homes has the course under contract from BH and intends to redevelop it under the act. Polo West has not operated as a golf course for years, while Village Golf Club remains open.
Conversions elsewhere take other forms, as at Farrell Estates, where 27 homes are planned on the former East Course at Palm Beach Polo and Country Club in Wellington, which closed in 2000, and at Pajaro Valley Golf Club outside Watsonville, California, where a master plan pairs townhomes and a new clubhouse with a leaner course and sits under county review. What distinguishes Royal Palm Beach is the mechanism. A state law that can remove rezoning and council votes for qualifying golf land in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties means the fate of a course may rest on environmental tests and a year of non-use rather than a public hearing.
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