SPOTLIGHT
In 2023, developers Alex Witkoff and Ari Pearl and their 150-acre Shell Bay project in Hallandale Beach grabbed attention nationally by offering memberships for $1 million-plus at the first new coastal golf course club opened in a quarter century. More recently, they and Shell Bay have gone into the luxe marina market, opening the private, 48-slip Shell Bay Yacht Club on the former Diplomat Golf & Tennis Club site. The club will also have two 55-foot houseboats for charter and curated fishing and snorkeling trips. Shell Bay, developed by Witkoff’s Witkoff Group and Pearl’s PPG Development, has a 108-unit, 20-story condo tower with prices starting at $2 million and will have an Auberge Resorts Collection hotel.
TRANSPORTATION
- Passenger rail company Brightline may look elsewhere on the Treasure Coast to place a station after the Stuart City Commission voted to abandon its deal to host the station in Stuart, deciding it was too expensive. Separately, the trainsets for Brightline West, the company’s Las Vegas to Southern California route under development, will be manufactured by Siemens at a factory in New York.
MANUFACTURING
- Newport Beach, Calif.-based juice company Perricone Farms, which has a factory in Vero Beach, acquired Fort Pierce-based Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Co. Natalie’s was founded more than 35 years ago by its CEO Marygrace Sexton, who named it for her daughter. It appeared several times on the Inc. 5000 list of fast-growing companies.
BUSINESS SERVICES
- Call center company IVox Solutions said the end of a contract with communications company Altice USA could lead to 109 layoffs at its facility in Port St. Lucie and remote workers in Orlando.
REAL ESTATE
- Fort Lauderdale-based tech company Citrix Systems, part of Cloud Software Group, sold its Cypress Creek Road headquarters for $37 million to A&D Mortgage founder and CEO Maksim Slyusarchuk’s company Illimitat and leased it back for 12 years.
- Sunbeam Development wants to put 2,874 multifamily units, a hotel, grocery store, offices and other retail and dining on 126 acres in Miramar. Sunbeam also owns the Miramar Park of Commerce.
- Delray Beach-based Kolter Group and Jupiter-based Perko Development Partners plan an 18-story luxury condo project in West Palm Beach, replacing a 40-year-old Flagler House condo building.
- Miami-based Related Group and Aventura-based BH Group want to build 512 residential units in their mixed-use Plantation City Center project on the site of a one-time AT&T training center in Plantation.
- The developer of Metropica in Sunrise wants to increase the project to 3,000 multifamily units and 925,000 square feet of offices. Prior city approval had been for 2,800 apartments and townhouses and 785,000 square feet of offices.
HEALTH CARE
- Utah-based CHG Healthcare closed its Boca Raton travel nursing unit RNnetwork, laying off 56.
- Osteopathic medical school VCOM continues talks with the Indian River County Hospital District about placing a medical school campus in Vero Beach. VCOM, the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, has campuses in Blacksburg, Va., Spartanburg, S.C., Auburn, Ala., and Monroe, La. VCOM third-year students already train with Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital.
- Baptist Health South Florida wants to build its first Broward County hospital in Sunrise, a 100-bed facility with an emergency department, offices, imaging and other services. Baptist has other facilities and practices in Broward. Taxpayer-subsidized Broward Health is developing a standalone emergency department in Sunrise.