Billionaire developer Jeff Greene has put forward a 25-story, 399-apartment tower for a downtown West Palm Beach block that, if built in the prefabricated timber described by its design team, would stand as the tallest wood-framed building in Florida. That is according to the South Florida Business Journal, which first detailed the proposal for 120 South Dixie Highway under the state’s Live Local Act.
The tower is the work of Carlo Ratti Associati, the Turin and New York practice whose founder curated the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, with a tapering faceted facade rising above a brick podium. Its design would fold a turn-of-the-century firehouse on the site into the building’s frontage, keeping the masonry landmark within a modern high-rise.
Carlo Ratti Associati and development partner Nexus Systems intend to build the tower from prefabricated timber modules, a method the team says would speed construction and keep costs down. The developers argue that off-site timber fabrication and the material’s lower embodied carbon would deliver a faster, cleaner build than a conventional concrete frame.
The Live Local Act lets qualifying projects bypass some local zoning limits and pursue administrative approval in return for long-term workforce housing. About 160 of the 399 apartments, roughly 40 per cent, would be reserved for households earning at or below 120 per cent of the area median income, which Palm Beach County sets at $104,000.
Plans describe studios through three-bedroom units of 505 to 1,320 square feet, with workforce homes set on floors two to four and six to 11 and market-rate apartments above. The scheme also carries about 7,550 square feet of retail and 236 parking spaces, alongside shared amenities including a pool and gym on the fifth floor.
The West Palm Beach Plans and Plats Review Committee reviewed the proposal on 14 May and returned it for changes the developer must make before construction can begin. That early municipal scrutiny sits at the front of a Live Local approval path that can otherwise move administratively once a filing meets the statutory checklist.
Tall-wood towers have won global support for faster assembly and lower carbon, yet they continue to raise engineering, fire-safety and insurance questions, particularly in hurricane-exposed markets such as South Florida. Whether a 25-story timber building can meet Florida’s wind codes and insurers’ requirements remains the central technical test for the design.
The 25-story Ascent tower in Milwaukee, completed in 2022 as the world’s tallest mass-timber building at the time, is routinely cited as proof that high-rise timber is achievable. Its example also shows how approval processes and insurance standards shift sharply from one jurisdiction to the next.
Greene is pressing ahead with the twin-tower One West Palm development downtown and holds extensive land across the city, a portfolio that has repeatedly drawn him into disputes with West Palm Beach over height and zoning. The new timber proposal arrives as those tensions continue, with the developer and the city already at odds over a separate Currie Park scheme.
For now the proposal rests with the West Palm Beach Plans and Plats Review Committee, which will decide whether a 25-story timber tower holding 160 affordable apartments clears the changes it has demanded before construction.
