March 29, 2024

Business Development

Fall Guy?

The economic recruiter who helped land Scripps steps down amid the ongoing controversy... Jorge L. Arrizurieta heads up Miami's effort to land the FTAA secretariat.

Pat Dunnigan | 3/1/2005
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Two years ago, business development board President Larry Pelton helped to score a deal for Palm Beach County that most economic development boosters could only dream about: The internationally renowned Scripps Research Institute would open a branch in the county, helping to create biotech spinoffs, joint ventures, academic facilities, housing developments and jobs, jobs, jobs in every direction.

One of those jobs, however, turned out to be Pelton's.

In January, after 15 years as head of the organization and months of struggling to move the project forward while defending the board's decision to negotiate the land deal associated with the project, Pelton stepped down.

At a luncheon two weeks later, Pelton said he had decided it was time for a new generation of leadership to take over the organization. Pelton clearly had been frustrated by all the squabbling over the Mecca Farms site, but if events or individuals had inspired his decision, he did not indicate so.

Other members of the business development community say Pelton was taking the fall for a deal that had begun to fray through no fault of his own. "Here's a guy who has landed the greatest economic whale in Florida history, and the whole thing is liable to go up in a puff of smoke," says development board member Kenneth Kirby.

Kirby blames Palm Beach County commissioners, who have refused to move forward with site preparation because of the ongoing environmental challenges. "I think they're trying to push Scripps off Mecca," Kirby says, referring to the 2,000-acre former orange grove that emerged as the first choice for the research center.

Pelton, who will stay on as a consultant for three months, also faces scrutiny from a task force created by county commissioners to overhaul the way the business development board functions.

Business development board Chairman Thomas Lynch says Pelton felt that as president he had come to embody the conflict between the board and the county commission. In Pelton's mind, "that made him the obstacle," Lynch says.

County Commissioner Jeff Koons says commissioners were not taking any shots at Pelton. "It wasn't Larry. We never asked him to step down." Rather, Koons says, commissioners were frustrated with what they perceived as a lack of trust by the business development board and an out-of-date way of doing things.

"Palm Beach County was perceived as the problem. The reality was Palm Beach County was part of the solution," Koons says. "This is a 40-year deal. There is all this pressure to build a building and execute a contract, and we're trying to look at long-term strategy. We're trying to get it right."

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