A plan to manage high volumes of traffic around former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach is now approved.
The council at its May 14 meeting voted 4-1 with member Ted Cooney dissenting to approve the update to the club's traffic management plan, which was created in 1999 and initially updated last year.
The refreshed plan outlines how the club must prepare for events based on the expected number of attendees, including off-site parking and shuttles for large events, officials said.The club also agreed to not have events that begin during peak early evening traffic hours.
The council, Police Chief Nicholas Caristo, the Secret Service, Mar-a-Lago representatives and the club's agent, attorney Harvey Oyer, have met several times over the past few months to iron out the plan's details.
"I can honestly say that in the past couple of months, even though this was not approved, Mar-a-Lago staff stuck to this plan that we came out with, that you see today, and it has significantly made a huge difference with the traffic concerns and the safety issues in that area when they have events," Caristo told the council.
The council requested that Mar-a-Lago update its traffic management plan after council members last year approved a new Secret Service guardhouse that sits inside the property's South Ocean Boulevard entrance. Though the guard house's approval came with new rules for traffic flow around the club, complaints from residents and visitors plus concerns from officials prompted the council to ask for more changes.
Caristo said that while there is no way to prepare for every possible situation, he feels that the plan approved this month will serve as a “very, very strong foundation.”
He pointed to several key points of the plan that he feels strengthen it from previous versions, including appointing the Mar-a-Lago Club’s security director as the person ultimately responsible for the success or failure of implementing the traffic management plan.
The club also will have to make sure that if an off-site location is used — whether that is the parking lot of the Bath & Tennis Club across the street or the parking lot of one of the hotels near the airport, which have been used previously — everything there will be ready to go 45 minutes before the event is set to begin, Caristo said.
To prevent traffic during Palm Beach’s rush hour, which is earlier than the traditional rush hour and falls from about 3 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, the club will not host large events that start between 3 and 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and between 3 and 5 p.m. on Fridays, he said.
When the South Ocean Boulevard entrance is used for events at Mar-a-Lago, guests who are southbound on South Ocean will not be able to enter the club, but instead will have to enter the roundabout at Southern Boulevard and come back around to line up in the northbound turn lane, Caristo said. Guests also will have to have their identifying documents and a QR code ready to scan at the gate, he said.
Off-duty law enforcement officers will be hired to help direct traffic for large events. Even if the Palm Beach Police Department is not hired, the department must be notified a month in advance about which events are coming up and how many attendees are expected at each one, Caristo said.
Cooney questioned a line in the management plan that said, “The Club is not legally required to make these modifications and is only voluntarily doing so as a good neighbor and good corporate citizen of the Town of Palm Beach in an effort to work cooperatively with the Town to improve traffic flow in the areas near the Club.”
Cooney said that while club representatives in the past have contended that Mar-a-Lago is not the cause of all of the traffic issues in that area, the quantity of vehicles flowing in and out of the club now is different from when the club received its original approval.
Before moving forward, Cooney said he wanted to make sure the traffic management plan is enforceable by the town and that the language is concrete.
With Trump using Mar-a-Lago as his primary residence, it has created even more pressure on South Ocean and Southern boulevards, now that there is more security and occasionally news crews moving on and off the property, Cooney said.
“I just want to make sure we tie as nice a bow on this as we can, just to ensure the town is protected and we can ensure the traffic is managed in the most efficient way,” he said.
If there are issues with following the traffic management plan, the club would be in violation of its declaration of use agreement, said attorney Harvey Oyer, representing the Mar-a-Lago Club before the council.
Oyer added that through the updates to the traffic management plan, the Mar-a-Lago Club is trying to help ease congestion in an area where there is a lot of road and residential construction, and the Southern Boulevard Bridge that opens and causes delays.
“Mar-a-Lago is not the sole cause of your South End traffic,” he said.
Cooney argued that Mar-a-Lago’s situation changed when it became a residence as well as a club, and when security and the Secret Service began requiring vehicles entering the property to line up outside of the grounds to be vetted.
The components of the plan have already been in place and have been adjusted throughout the season with results that continue to improve, Caristo said.
Following the council's vote to approve, Araskog the next day during the monthly Development Review Committee meeting made a request of Oyer: Come back in a year to report on the plan's success.
Oyer, who represented the Society of the Four Arts in development review and was not there to discuss Mar-a-Lago's traffic management plan, said he would talk with his client about the possibility of a one-year review and let the council know.
Kristina Webb is a reporter for Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her atkwebb@pbdailynews.com.Subscribe todaytosupport our journalism.
