Pruning a Palm Beach County nursery could help grow a new north-south road corridor west of Boynton Beach.
Plans to replace at least a portion of Abell’s Nursery with 106 homes also include providing land to extend Haverhill Road south of Hypoluxo Road.
Long-term transportation plans call for extending Haverhill from Hypoluxo about a half mile to the other side of a canal where it continues to the south. Haverhill stretches as far north as the Bee Line Highway.
Developers’ plans for Abell’s Nursery provide a piece of the extension. That allows the county to start shopping for more land to the south needed to fill in the gap.
“It is going to provide relief to Military Trail and Jog Road,” said Dan Weisberg, director of the county traffic division.
When Abell’s Nursery opened about 20 years ago, nurseries were a common sight on land near the corner of Hypoluxo and Military Trail.
As new neighborhoods stretched farther west along Hypoluxo, and more stores and restaurants followed, Abell’s Nursery found itself surrounded by suburbia.
Nursery owners Ray and Melodye Abell said in May that they planned to stick around, with the hopes of passing the business to the next generation.
However, Ray Abell also said the temptation to sell was growing with every visit from developers offering to buy the land where they sold landscaping intended to beautify the neighborhoods that just kept coming.
County records show that Toll Brothers Inc. in June filed development plans to build 106 zero-lot-line homes on 44 acres that include the Abells’ property at the southeast corner of Hypoluxo and Hypoluxo Farms Road.
The Abells’ Nursery also extends to the west of Hypoluxo Farms Road. The Abells could not be reached to comment about the plans for the rest of their property.
Toll Brothers plans to build a gated community, similar to the 175 zero-lot-line houses planned on 54 acres to the east, project consultant Jennifer Morton said.
Plans for the neighboring Isola Bella Isles call for homes starting at 2,000 square feet on land that houses a vacant Catholic church and was once pegged for a monastery and cemetery.
County development guidelines call for up to three homes per acre in that area and Toll Brothers proposes building a little more than two homes per acre, Morton said.
“We are not maxing out … the site,” Morton said. “It will be a nice little community.”
The development proposal reserves a 100-foot-wide section along the east side of the property for the Haverhill Road extension. The development’s retention ponds also would handle the storm drainage expected from the road, according to the proposal.
County transportation plans call for acquiring more land and starting the permitting process for a Haverhill extension in 2008, but more development — and the traffic that comes with it — could speed up that timetable, Weisberg said.
Losing another nursery would be worth gaining a new route to head north and south, said Sandy Greenberg, president of the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations.
“Where are all these cars going to go? You need more roads,” she said.
Andy Reid can be reached at or 561-832-6598.
