Planning commission approves tier change for Palms West parcel to allow hospital parking and future development

Palms West Hospital’s request to redesignate an 18.85‑acre parcel from the rural tier to the urban‑suburban tier was approved unanimously by the Palm Beach County Planning Commission after presentations from the applicant and county staff.

The change, presented by Joanie Brinkman of Urban Design Studio on behalf of HCA Palms West, would make the parcel consistent with the hospital campus to the east and allow the county’s urban‑suburban landscape and parking standards to apply to new surface parking proposed on the site. “What we have before you today is a tier change … the application request actually applies to the area in red to the west of the existing Palms West Hospital facilities,” Brinkman said during the presentation.

Staff planner Alondra Lopez Mojica told commissioners the site at issue is an 18.85‑acre unincorporated pocket north of Southern Boulevard and roughly a half‑mile west of Crestwood Boulevard, surrounded by the village of Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee Groves and the village of Wellington. She said the county’s tier system — established in the comprehensive plan — guides where higher densities are allowed and that the proposed change would make the hospital’s combined property subject to the same tier and code standards. “The tier change is consistent with the previously mentioned policies,” Lopez Mojica said, adding the required contiguity and anti‑sprawl analyses were completed by staff.

The commission heard that no buildings are proposed on the parcel at this time; the applicant seeks to use the site for additional surface parking to support an earlier, separately approved expansion of the hospital campus. Staff noted the change would increase the site’s theoretical development potential: the planner said allowable floor area on the parcel would rise from about 82,000 square feet under rural tier rules to nearly 370,000 square feet under urban‑suburban standards if a future development proposal were made.

Commissioners asked about public comment and traffic impacts. Commissioner Serge de Haiti said he had not seen public comments and asked whether municipalities had raised concerns; staff replied that at least one municipality had posed questions that staff addressed and had no outstanding objections. When asked about westbound traffic on Southern Boulevard, the applicant replied she did not have a traffic engineer at the hearing and that any specific traffic or concurrency issues would be handled through a future development‑order amendment if and when a building proposal is filed. “We’re going to have to go back through a development order amendment process where concurrency will actually be addressed at that point in time,” Brinkman said.

The county recommended approval with conditions, including a limit on the maximum number of trips allowed from the parcel to ensure compliance with long‑range traffic standards (policy 3.5D). The commission then voted to approve the staff recommendation; the motion passed unanimously.

The tier redesignation amends two maps in the county comprehensive plan (map LU‑1.1 to change the tier designation and map LU‑2.1 to depict the site as an urban service area). Staff emphasized that the tier change does not itself change the parcel’s future land use category, which remains institutional and public facilities; it instead changes only the managed‑growth tier that governs density and development standards.

Commissioners and staff said future expansions or uses that involve buildings would require separate applications and public review, at which point traffic concurrency and other development standards would be evaluated.

Notes: The transcript records prior approvals and rezoning actions related to the hospital site and references an earlier development order amendment and site plan approval. The applicant and staff emphasized that the proposed tier change is intended to allow consistent application of code standards across the combined hospital property and to accommodate additional surface parking to support an approved expansion.