We are going to make this happen: Developer gives more details on next-gen office tower for West Palm – Palm Beach Post

Developer, architect, lay out design for Class A-plus office tower at entrance to West Palm Beachs downtown tent site.

WEST PALM BEACH -- Developer Charles Cohen on Monday gained conceptual approval for what he promised would be a world-class office tower at the entrance to West Palm Beachs downtown, one he said would enhance its surroundings and draw top tenants.

And it will get done, he said -- something that has eluded the citys efforts to build on the property nicknamed the tent site for 24 years.

"We are going to make this happen. Weve never undertaken, as a company or me, myself, any project that we havent completed within the time frame that we made our commitment to accomplish."

City commissioners, acting as the Community Redevelopment Agency board, voted 4-0 for the West Palm Point project to rise on the 2.4-acre property at the corner of Okeechobee Boulevard and South Dixie Highway. Commissioner Cory Neering was absent.

Cohen Brothers Realty now is to spend several months refining plans for the 338-foot glass tower, conducting traffic studies and seeking city approvals for project details before construction begins.

Cohen and chief architect Kristin Hawkins of world-renowned Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects presented the board with their concept for the project. It will include an elliptical tower with 23 floors of offices, rising beside a 10-story garage adorned with art and topped with a sky terrace with a reflective pool and landscaped seating areas.

The tower and garage will separated by a walkway called a paseo, 45 feet across at its widest, with tables and chairs, "a very active space, kind of a destination space," as Hawkins called it. Shops will line the garages ground level, along Dixie and elsewhere.

Mayor Keith James asked Cohen whether the project could attract tenants in a COVID-19 world that has thrown into question how strong office demand will be.

The developer responded with a reference to the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams.

"If we build it and do the job right, which we have every intention of doing, they will come," Cohen said. "We have time," he said, adding that development is a long process and this project has the advantage of an environment of available financing with low interest rates.

The company has yet to address one of the biggest concerns facing downtown -- traffic. Cohens attorney for the project, Brian Seymour, said traffic studies could not be done until the conceptual design was completed but that now they would be.

The developer recognizes the building will not exist in a vacuum, Seymour said.

"We know traffic on Okeechobee is an issue for the community. I cant tell you how were going to deal with all of it, because were not at that stage yet but we are going to deal with that," he said.

The developer will look for ways to integrate trolley service, scooter-share and bike-share facilities with the design, he said, forms of transportation the city has encouraged to reduce dependence on cars.

Hawkins, with Pelli since 1985, was design team leader for Cohens Red Building, the 800,000-square-foot final building of the award-winning Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, Calif. She is leading the design team for a natural history museum in China.

"Its deeply ingrained in our process that our buildings become good citizens," she told commissioners. "We design them to fit into their context, not necessarily to be the same as, but to fit in so that they complement the existing context and become positive additions to the fabric thats already there."

The architects approached the project as almost a campus master plan, with components that relate to each other "without talking over each other," she said. At West Palm Point, the main components are the tower, the garage and the paseo.

Early on, they considered having the garage as part of the tower but decided that would look too massive, she said. Instead the two will be linked only by the ground floor paseo and a small garage-top bridge.

The tower, with its main drive-up entry on Quadrille Boulevard, will be of lightly tinted glass, she said. Its designed to look transparent, airy and open, so you can see through the lobby to the paseo, she said.

The tower will taper slightly toward its top, with subtle "fins" on the sides, to accent its verticality.

The garage is designed not to be disguised, as in some buildings, but to be as "soft" and attractive a structure as possible, with colorful art by Felice Varini wrapping around its sides, around its corners and into its interior, with fragmented geometric shapes that look different from different angles.

"What makes the building important in today's world is that It has all the latest technological advances," Cohen said, touting its quality level as Class A-plus.

"Were in a different world now and we will use that to educate ourselves, to make a building that will be not only world class in its planning and construction," the developer said, "but in the building systems and how it will be a healthy environment that is all focused on wellness and allowing people to feel safe and secure in an office environment."

tdoris@pbpost.com

@TonyDorisPBP

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We are going to make this happen: Developer gives more details on next-gen office tower for West Palm - Palm Beach Post