Gainswave Therapy in Arden, FL

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Idalia is raising concerns about what it could do to homeowners insurance all across Florida. The storm strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane on Tuesday and is expected to make landfall in Florida's Big Bend.

Many residents are hoping that this will be a quiet and uneventful hurricane season to allow Florida's troubled insurance market to calm down.

But the storm season is revving up, putting insurance companies and residents on edge.

"Anytime storms come to Florida, now with our sensitivity in the marketplace, is not a good thing," Robert Norberg with Arden Insurance in Lantana said.

He has been navigating the rough ride of property insurance recently, which has included skyrocketing premiums and canceled policies.

"On our coast, they're saying, 'What's the problem?' and I have to explain to people anytime there is a hurricane [affecting the state it] doesn't matter east coast or west coast, you're going to feel some impact," Norberg said. "It may not be now, but it will be in the future as far as availability and pricing."

Last year, Hurricane Ian left a costly path of death and destruction in southwest Florida.

Norberg points out that Ian strained many insurers and drove up losses and premiums to cover the costs.

In recent years, litigation and lawsuits have paired up with storms to contribute to large spikes in premiums as insurance companies try to absorb losses.

The insurance crisis has inflated the numbers of policies, shifting more people to the state-run Citizens Insurance, which now has more than 1.2 million policies.

State officials and lawmakers hope new reforms and a break from destructive storms can get the industry back on solid footing and not hammering policyholders.

Jimmy Patronis, Florida's chief financial officer, said he's been working to get more private companies to come to Florida and assume some of Citizens Insurance policies.

"A lot of the relief I'm looking forward to seeing come to the state of Florida, they're not coming till after November, hurricane season," Patronis said. "Why does somebody want to come and invest in a state if they may be susceptible to hurricane catastrophic damage."

The bottom line is that even if Idalia misses South Florida and the Treasure Coast, it doesn't mean we're necessarily in the clear with insurance costs.

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ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – One year ago, Hurricane Ian swept through Central Florida.

Flood waters were so high at the Arden Villas Apartments in Orange County that dozens of people who lived there were stuck inside. Exzia Witherspoon was one of those people.

Wednesday, she shared her scary experience with News 6.

“It still feels really surreal,” Witherspoon said.

After the hurricane passed, Witherspoon thought she and her roommate had gotten through the worst of it and were in the clear.

“At that point, there was water in the road, but no one expected it to, like, flood,” Witherspoon said.

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The University of Central Florida student was stuck inside her apartment building watching the flood waters continuously rise.

Witherspoon’s unit was on the first floor.

First, she moved her patio furniture.

Next, Witherspoon noticed water started seeping into the hallway of her building — then into her actual unit.

“That is when we started to, like, panic and try to get everything as high as we could and move things around, so they don’t get as damaged,” Witherspoon said.

Her efforts weren’t enough. The water destroyed nearly everything in her first-floor apartment, including sentimental items like her childhood violin.

She also lost her car, all her furniture and her clothing. The flood forced Witherspoon and her roommate to the third floor.

News 6 reporter Treasure Roberts was at the complex when she saw Witherspoon’s mother, Teresa Jernigan, at the front of the complex panicking.

She was on the phone with Witherspoon at the time.

“My mom definitely went into mom mode and was trying to talk me through it, calm me down,” Witherspoon said.

Jernigan drove nearly two hours from Palm Coast when she got her daughter’s call for help.

“It was terrible, the weather was bad, the truck was swaying back and forth, it was a little on the scary side, but all I could focus on was just going to save her,” Jernigan said.

Witherspoon and others who lived there were stuck for at least six hours.

“There was a lot of crying — nonstop, pretty much,” Witherspoon said.

It was the high waters and unknown dangers, like gators lurking in the water, that kept them trapped.

“It was probably chest level, and at points, it would reach to my neck when you hit certain dips in the road is where I couldn’t touch the ground anymore,” Witherspoon said.

Witherspoon’s family used an air mattress to navigate through the water and over to her.

“It (kind of) was that moment where something doesn’t take that long, but it feels like forever,” Witherspoon said.

Finally, she and her cat made it to safety.

Jernigan watched as Witherspoon drudged through the water and toward her. She felt relief instantly, and so did her daughter.

“After everything that happened, I just wanted to see my mom,” Witherspoon said.

It cost Witherspoon’s family thousands of dollars to replace all of her belongings, and it took about three months for her to get settled at a different apartment.

Now, Witherspoon takes extra steps during hurricane season, so she doesn’t end up in a scary situation like this again.

Arden Group’s logistics investment division bought three warehouses in West Palm Beach for $43 million.

Arden Logistics Parks scooped up the three buildings at 1100, 1300 and 1500 North Florida Mango Road from affiliates of Alliance HP, according to records and real estate database Vizzda.

The buyer assumed the $24.1 million balance of the seller’s loan and increased it to $48 million, with the collateral being for the West Palm warehouses, as well as three industrial buildings in Minnesota.

CIT Bank, a division of First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company, is the lender.

The buildings are 98 percent leased to 40 tenants, according to an Arden Logistics Parks news release announcing the purchase.

Completed between 1984 and 1986, the one-story buildings, called Landmark Commerce Centre I, II and III, span roughly 195,500 square feet on 1.1 acres, according to the release. Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based Alliance HP paid $34 million for the real estate in 2021, property records show.

Founded in 2009, Alliance HP is a commercial real estate investor, developer and operator with an industrial portfolio consisting of 45 properties spanning 8.9 million square feet, according to its website. Alliance HP is an affiliate of Jay Shidler’s finance and real estate firm The Shidler Group. Clay Hamlin III and Richard Previdi founded and lead Alliance HP.

The firm has played Monopoly with Palm Beach County industrial real estate over the past year. Alliance HP paid $15.9 million for the industrial park at 1426 Skees Road, south of West Palm Beach, in May of last year. That acquisition followed the firm’s sale of a distribution center at 1100 25th Street in the city for $12.2 million.

In 2021, Alliance HP bought an industrial property and adjacent parking lot at 7233 and 7109 Seacrest Boulevard in Lake Worth Beach for $17 million.

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Founded in 1989, Arden Group is a real estate firm and fund manager that has purchased $7 billion worth of properties, as well as managed $12 billion of commercial real estate and more than $2 billion in equity capital, according to its website. It’s led by Craig Spencer.

Arden Group started Arden Logistics Parks in 2021 to focus on industrial properties.

The West Palm purchase marks Arden Logistics Parks’ first in the city, according to the release.

The acquisition also was made through Arden Real Estate Partners fund IV, according to records and an Arden spokesperson.

Last year, Arden Logistics Parks bought a 19-building portfolio spanning over 764,000 square feet in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The price was not disclosed at the time of the deal.

This month, Arden Group won a foreclosure case it had filed on a loan it had provided to Sharif El-Gamal’s Margaritaville Hotel in New York, acquiring the Times Square hotel through a credit bid.

Palm Beach County’s industrial market experienced a 12.3 percent uptick in asking rents in the third quarter, year-over-year, according to an Avison Young report.

Due to expensive borrowing costs, investment sales across commercial asset classes has been suppressed. This month, Strategic Storage Growth Trust III paid $19.5 million for the newly built self-storage facility at 8251 West McNab Road in Tamarac. In September, Stockbridge Capital Group bought a six-building warehouse portfolio at 4611-4661 and 4701 Johnson Road, as well as at 4811 and 4911 Lyons Technology Parkway, in Coconut Creek for $48.9 million.

The start of the 2023-24 school year was more exciting than usual because it brought the opening of two new schools in Palm Beach County.

Both West Boynton Middle School and Dr. Joaquín García High School are expected to relieve crowding in nearby schools.

Meanwhile, parents and students keeping a close eye on crowding in schools in other parts of the county are asking, "Where are the next new schools going to be in Palm Beach County?"

Each year, the School District of Palm Beach County updates its multi-year capital plan to build campuses that will address school crowding and new home construction. School board members approved the most recent version on Sept. 6.

Changes to the plan are possible based on community growth and student enrollment. The current version does not include addresses for new campuses. Instead, it refers to schools by the part of the county where the school will be. Naming committees choose the schools' official titles once the campuses are built.

A look inside:'All for the students:' A look inside Palm Beach County's new Dr. García High

Here's what to know about the new schools planned for Palm Beach County:

Elementary school in west Acreage area serving Arden

Opening: Fall 2025

Nearby: Binks Forest, Loxahatchee Groves and Frontier elementaries

A new elementary school west of The Acreage was originally supposed to open in August 2027, but school district officials moved the construction timeline up, expecting more growth in the area.

The Acreage is not an incorporated municipality, but it has a population of just over 40,000 people, making it about the size of Lake Worth Beach and Greenacres. The school is planned for the Arden community, which is just west of The Acreage near the 20 Mile Bend. Arden will one day have more than 2,000 homes, according to its site plan.

"I know the community of Arden is so excited that we've moved that school up. It's growing and growing and growing there, and they need a school," school board member Marcia Andrews said at a September board meeting.

Elementary school in Palm Beach Gardens possibly serving Alton, Avenir

Opening: Fall 2027

Nearby: Beacon Cove and Marsh Pointe elementaries

The "Scripps/Gardens area" school will likely be near Donald Ross Road and serve students in and around Palm Beach Gardens.

The area east of Interstate 95 and south of Donald Ross is home to a 930-home development named Alton, which is nearly complete and markets itself to young families.

Far west of the interstate, Gardens is growing in the form of Avenir, a 3,900-home community created by different builders with their own site plans. The development will include a small hospital and medical offices, a grocery store and pharmacy, a golf course and a clubhouse.

Somerset Academy has already announced plans to build a 600-student charter school in the Avenir area west of Beeline Highway. Charter schools are public schools operated by private entities.

25th county high school near the western communities including Avenir

Opening: Fall 2028

Nearby: Seminole Ridge and Wellington high schools

Fresh off building its 24th high school on Lyons Road west of Lake Worth Beach, the school district has set its sights on constructing its 25th high school in the western communities.

The school district owns land, likely for the new school, at the western end of Northlake Boulevard — about six miles northwest of Seminole Ridge High. It sits just east of the County Pines Recreational Complex at Samuel Friedland Park.

The high school will likely serve students from Avenir, The Acreage and Loxahatchee.

K-8 school in Delray Beach

Opening: Fall 2030

Nearby: S.D. Spady, Banyan Creek Pine Grove, Orchard View and Morikami Park elementaries

The school district has released few details about where the new school will be in Delray Beach because the opening date is so far in the future.

The district has three other K-8 public schools right now: Hidden Oaks west of Lantana, North Grade in Lake Worth Beach and Verde in Boca Raton.

Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering education at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at kkokal@pbpost.com. Help support our work, subscribe today!

Spending more time at home has people re-evaluating their space - and looking for more.

The first time Sasha and Ashton Hulscher visited the growing Arden development on Southern Boulevard west of Wellington, it was like a dream.

“It had everything we wanted,” Sasha Hulscher said.

But the couple had no intention of buying.

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That changed about a year later during the coronavirus pandemic. At home with their children, the couple began looking at their surroundings — and realized they did want to move to the “agrihood,” which combines a suburban feel with wide open spaces and a working farm.

Now, like so many others in Palm Beach County, the Hulschurs have a new house under construction with builder Kenco in Arden, part of a larger trend during the pandemic as people finding themselves spending more time at home and re-evaluate their space.

Arden alone has seen a 41 percent increase in sales since the beginning of the pandemic, according to its developer, Freehold Communities.

Other new home communities in Palm Beach County are seeing similar increases, with builders including Minto and Pulte charting jumps, especially since the beginning of summer.

People spent more time at home since the beginning of the pandemic, especially from mid-March to about June, when many businesses were closed.

During that time, people looked around their spaces at what they had — and what they didn’t, Freehold Communities marketing director Susan Moguel said.

“When you’ve been stuck at home for so long … you feel very claustrophobic,” she said.

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That has driven many from apartments, condominiums and more congested areas to Arden, built on a former sod farm near 20-Mile Bend with 15 miles of trails, two large lakes and a farm that provides residents with fresh produce, she said.

“People who come out to Arden, they’re coming because they’re looking for wide-open spaces,” Moguel said, adding, “We’ve been selling homes really at a record pace.”

In Westlake, Palm Beach County’s newest city, developer Minto also is doing business at a record clip, Minto Communities USA president Mike Belmont said.

“We’ve had just an outstanding year,” he said.

While sales slumped in March and April, they have continued to rise since May, Belmont said.

From January to late October, Minto sold 406 homes in Westlake — about a 250 percent increase over the same period the year before, when Minto sold 164 homes, he said.

Minto also has sold some of its land in Westlake to other builders: Label & Co., which opened for sales in February and sold 159 homes, and Kolter Homes, which opened more recently and already has sold about 30 homes, Belmont said.

The demand is so high that when new lots are available, he said people line up outside Minto’s sales office in Westlake, which rose on the former Callery-Judge citrus grove after years of debate over growth in and around The Acreage.

“There is a tremendous amount of demand,” Belmont said, adding that so far Minto has been able to keep up with the pace, in part by moving up some development that hadn’t been planned to begin until 2021.

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More than 60% of Minto’s Westlake sales over the summer were buyers moving from rental homes or apartments, he said.

“COVID-19 has kind of been the impetus to get people to move, for various reasons,” he said. “I think the idea of having your own home and your own backyard is pretty important.”

The need for space and flexibility inside and outside of a home is a major trend at The Fields, a Pulte Group-developed neighborhood on Lake Worth Road west of Florida’s Turnpike, Pulte vice president of sales Bridjette Shelfo said.

Pulte sold 125 homes at The Fields through the end of October, she said, with a high demand for townhomes.

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“People are definitely gravitating toward the home that meets their needs,” Shelfo said.

Buyers coming to The Fields are re-evaluating what they want from their homes, she said.

“And they’re seeing more ability to customize the home and see the way they want to live … with multipurposing spaces,” Shelfo said.

The Hulschers had a lot of room to move at their last house in Royal Palm Beach, but were looking for something that didn’t have the many issues that come along with aging homes.

“It’s the conveniences, like impact windows,” Ashton Hulscher said. “We’re both in our mid-40s, and that has an appeal.”

Realtor Bonnie Heatzig, known as “The Luxury Real Estate Authority,” said buyers are looking for more flexibility in their homes.

“A lot of people now are working from home,” she said. “They also want homes that have a home gym. … They really want to live more in their space.”

While some new home buyers live in Palm Beach County, builders and Realtors say some also are coming from elsewhere.

Since the beginning of the summer, more people are coming from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut — even California, they said.

“It’s really incredible,” Heatzig said. She works primarily in southern Palm Beach County and said that just in one day last week, she met three buyers from California.

Joey Hartman, general manager of sales with Pulte Group, said people are coming from all over the country to buy in South Florida.

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“We’re seeing a lot of push from those areas,” Hartman said of the Northeast and California. “I would say in the last three months or so, we’ve seen a big increase there.”

Heatzig agreed.

“We’re getting people from all over,” she said. And while some buyers say they’re choosing South Florida over higher-tax states, others say the pandemic has left them wanting more space.

“They are going bigger,” Heatzig said.

In Westlake, Minto is seeing about a quarter of recent buyers coming from Broward County, Belmont said.

As the demand for new homes continues to rise, builders have faced some challenges.

The pandemic has affected the supply chain, particularly for appliances, Belmont said.

Many common appliance parts are made in Mexico and China, two countries hit hard by COVID-19.

“So the demand for that’s huge,” Belmont said.

Demand has driven up prices for other home-building supplies, including lumber and windows, he said.

Builders said they are doing their best to grapple with any price increases or shortages.

Pulte's Shelfo said they are experiencing it “just as much as any other large builder."

“I think we’re navigating the shortage the best that we can,” she said, adding that Pulte is doing its best to leverage trade relationships to get the best possible result for its buyers.

The company also is working to “overcommunicate” with buyers about delays, Shelfo said.

Before the Hulschers move with their two sons and two large dogs to their new home in Arden, they first had to sell their house in the Madison Green neighborhood of Royal Palm Beach.

The couple put their home on the market on a Friday. By Sunday, they had multiple offers, Sasha Hulscher said.

“The reality is, we sold this house so easy,” said Sasha Hulscher. “It’s quite extraordinary.”

It really is a seller’s market, Heatzig said. Interest rates are “incredibly low,” she said.

That makes home-buying an even more competitive process for buyers, Heatzig said.

“Definitely be prepared” to move as quickly as possible, she added.

For the Hulschers, it will be about 10 months before they move into their new home in Arden, a standard build time for new single-family homes in Palm Beach County.

They look forward to hitting the trails around Arden and enjoying the open spaces there, they said.

“We love the schools, we love the neighborhood,” Sasha Hulscher said. “It’s just beautiful.”

kwebb@pbpost.com

Twitter: @kristinawebb