Related Ross buys Wellington land for village center

Related Ross has closed on a $28.3 million land acquisition in Wellington, Fla., for Village Landing, the open-air mixed-use project that will mark the firm's first ground-up development outside West Palm Beach since its 2024 launch, Commercial Observer reported. The 32-acre site at 10400 Stribling Way, east of State Road 7, is planned for a 180-room hotel and more than 300,000 square feet of retail, office and restaurant space tied together by six plazas, a layout closer to a traditional town center than to a power center. Kevin Ryan, Related Ross's executive vice president, said in a statement that the goal is a village center that complements what is already special about Wellington while adding everyday amenities for the western Palm Beach County communities. Construction is expected to begin this fall.

Related Ross, the namesake firm of billionaire Stephen Ross, became West Palm Beach's biggest office owner after that 2024 launch, and the scale of the bet is already visible in two more office towers rising on the back of a $772 million construction loan package and two luxury condo developments under construction, all part of Ross's plan to turn the city into a magnet for technology and finance companies. The Wellington deal pushes that strategy west into a corner of Palm Beach County better known for horse farms than office parks, where the customers will be equestrian families and western county residents rather than corporate tenants, which is why the retail and restaurant component matters as much as the hotel.

The combined 71-acre parcel sits in the Acme Improvement District, a special drainage and infrastructure district created by the Florida Legislature in 1953 and controlled by the Village of Wellington. A 44-acre western portion of the site is expected to sell in October to ElevateED, which will operate a private grade school there, according to a Related Ross representative, and that sale, if it closes as expected, would separate the school land from the 32-acre commercial program.

Starwood Property Trust supplied a $29.1 million loan, about $800,000 more than the $28.3 million purchase price, which suggests the lender is underwriting early carry or sitework rather than waiting for a vertical construction loan. The check is far smaller than the record $672 million industrial outdoor storage financing Starwood closed with Realterm in August, as this publication reported, but it shows the same appetite for patient cash placed directly into the land. With the school sale expected to close in October and construction slated for the fall, Related Ross is putting a lender and a neighbor in place before the first shovel.