This feature from the South Florida Sun Sentinel is part of a series of stories highlighting concerns in Palm Beach County’s Agricultural Reserve, a region where there’s long-standing debate over land preservation and growth.
Longtime plant nursery owner Paul Okean and his two grown children walk along a barren patch of land on a recent morning, frustrated but hopeful about the future of their family terrain in the Ag Reserve.
It used to claim a booming nursery. It used to be where the kids grew up at their dad’s farm-oriented workplace, a distinct upbringing they remember fondly.
These days, the family has been working together to convert the land into something for which they again can be proud.
Blane Okean, 37, and Alexandra Okean, 31, are working with their dad to redevelop about 61 acres he owns in the Palm Beach County Agricultural Reserve in West Delray. The land used to house commercial operation Morningstar Nursery.
The Okean family has spent years trying to reenvision this land, with the project going through drastic revisions, enduring multiple County Commission meetings and facing significant backlash, illustrating the perpetual debate over whether projects are compatible in the Agricultural Reserve.
In an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Paul Okean provided an update on the latest plans for his land, months after the Palm Beach County commissioners allowed the Okeans’ proposal to progress while expecting some revisions.
“There needs to be more conversation. There is some considerations to be made that can be done between now and when this comes back to us,” Commissioner Marci Woodward said during the May meeting where the project was discussed.
Maria Marino, the county mayor at the time, had said she wanted to see something “a little less dense on the property.”
The redevelopment plan, which technically is two proposals called Park West North and Park West South, proposes self storage, a fitness center, manufacturing and processing space with a taproom, and warehouses with accessory offices.
Park West North is proposed for roughly 51 acres at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Florida’s Turnpike, east of Starkey Road. Park West South is proposed for roughly 10 acres east of Persimmon Avenue and directly south of Atlantic Avenue.
Paul Okean’s project in the Ag Reserve is caught “in the middle of that battlefield,” as he puts it.
“I’ve been the target for the last six, seven years,” he said.
And even though he and his family feel they have made painstaking efforts to craft and modify a redevelopment plan that reduces impact to the surrounding areas and serves the needs of the Ag Reserve, some nearby landowners still feel it poses a threat.
“We’re doing everything we feel we can do to make it right and make it right for all the parties,” Okean said. “We’re never going to get 100% of folks on board, it’s just kind of the nature of the world we live in. I can’t think of any other uses that are less intense than what we’re proposing nor have I heard anyone suggest one.”
Paul Okean, center, stands with his kids, Alexandra Okean and Blane Okean, on their property in West Delray on Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Park West’s phases
Before the project was Park West North and South, it was known as Tenderly Reserve.
Tenderly Reserve initially pitched more than 700 multifamily units, a hotel, retail and office space, an indoor recreation and workspace, a neighborhood grocery, workforce housing, a town center, main street and public preserve.
At the time, County Commissioner Maria Sachs favored this mixed-use concept, saying it could be a place for young families who could access restaurants and entertainment close to where they live.
But others, such as the members of the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations, took issue with Tenderly Reserve, saying the surrounding infrastructure couldn’t support it.
That was in 2023. In the months that followed, the Okeans worked to change the project.
When the Park West project — the version of the project with warehouses, self storage and more — went before the county in May, commissioners gave it initial approval. But they also agreed it should undergo more modifications before it is presented again early next year.
After the May meeting, the Okeans again went to work on revising the project.
Internal roads on both the Park West North and Park West South properties were added, giving access to and from the warehouses directly from Atlantic Avenue: right-in, right-out, it’s called. For the Park West North proposal, this reduces the traffic projections from the original proposal by more than 75% on the nearby thoroughfare, Starkey Road, which runs north to south, according to site-plan documents.
“Now the vast majority of traffic comes and leaves from our property,” Paul Okean said.
Paul Okean and his planners also worked to reduce the size of the warehouses, including by decreasing tractor-trailer bays from 93 to 22.
Small businesses, such as plumbers and electricians, could benefit from the type of bays on the revised plan, Paul Okean said.
And as people continue moving into neighborhoods built in the Ag Reserve — consider the dozen GL Homes Valencia communities, for example — the Okeans believe there is a need for businesses to have a base near the areas they serve.
“We want to have a legacy here, and if the legacy is creating something that is beneficial to small business owners, I can definitely live with that,” Blane Okean said.
A fateful encounter
Paul Okean’s route to the nursery business was unexpected, to say the least.
As someone from Los Angeles with a family background in real estate, Okean hadn’t dabbled in or ever considered the nursery industry as a career path until moving to Miami more than 40 years ago.
Feeling discouraged by a lack of prospects, Okean intended to move back to Los Angeles until he struck up conversation with landscaping crews in Miami one day as he went out to his mailbox.
“I just, for whatever reason — fate is a crazy thing — started chatting with one of the guys doing the planting,” he said. “I was just asking basic questions, where do you find these? Where do you buy them? Where are they grown?”
That conversation acted as the catalyst for what would ultimately become Morningstar Nursery, as Okean, acting as the founder and owner, went on to buy land in Hypoluxo in 1982 and land in the Ag Reserve in West Delray in 1983 and began running his business.
Morningstar became a vendor for large retailers and “supermarkets around the country, all the way to the West Coast,” Okean said. During the peak seasons, up to 100 people were employed at any given time, and Okean estimates Morningstar Nursery employed 500 to 600 people over the course of its more than 20-year operation.
“I knew many of those plants were going to end up in someone’s dorm room, in someone’s house, or someone’s living room or whatever the case would be,” he said. “It was so rewarding to know that.”
Paul Okean stands on his property in Delray Beach, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
In the early 2000s though, Okean began facing a series of challenges.
Nineteen acres of Okean’s land in West Delray were seized through the eminent domain process — the government’s ability to acquire private property for public projects — as part of Florida’s Turnpike-related construction work. The turnpike was getting a new entrance and exit near Okean’s land, he said.
Hurricane Wilma also hit South Florida in 2005, decimating agricultural and nursery land. Then came the Great Recession, which started in December 2007 and lasted through mid-2009.
“A lot of things start to pile up,” he said. “It was a combination of all these things, and it just didn’t make sense for me to start scaling up.”
So, in 2009, Okean said he starting selling off his Morningstar Nursery inventory but retained the land. In the years to come, Okean would work with his children to develop the property — but shifting from agriculture to development has not proven to be a very popular idea among people who think farms should be eternally preserved. This especially is true in the Ag Reserve.
“I think the Ag Reserve has become this area that’s considered sacrosanct, in other words, untouchable,” Okean said. “People just want to cherish it, even though that’s not the intent.”
Blane Okean considers it unfair that that proposals have received such criticism.
A new “community pops up and they want to go and buy a house, but when someone who’s been here for 40 years wants to develop their property, they seem to really take issue with that,” he said. “We could propose anything here. We could propose a, you know, children’s hospital here. It wouldn’t matter, right? They view just development in general, the concept, as the enemy.”
If operating Morningstar Nursery were still viable, Blane Okean said they would be doing that.
“We didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to quit,” he said.
Facing opposition
Perhaps no one has expressed more opposition to the Park West project than the nearby O’Donnell family, starting from when the project was still Tenderly Reserve.
Directly northwest of Paul Okean’s property is Irish Acres, a 60-acre horse-boarding stable, founded by Joe O’Donnell and his wife, Barbara O’Donnell.
Joe O’Donnell has appeared before the Palm Beach County commissioners on multiple occasions to decry the project, namely concerned with how the project could disrupt the peaceful environment required for horses with noise and traffic. Others like O’Donnell also have expressed concern about the project’s compatibility in the area.
“This is really a bad idea. Approval of this puts Irish Acres’ survival in jeopardy,” O’Donnell told county commissioners at the May meeting.
Meanwhile, others have advocated for Okean’s right to build on his land. Suzanne Mulvehill, a former Lake Worth Beach city commissioner, used to owned land in the Ag Reserve for years.
“This is about doing the right thing,” Mulvehill said to the commissioners earlier this year. “This is about property rights.”
New vibrancy
On the day that Okean, 70, gathered with his children at the Park West North parcel — which currently is leased to Pike Electric — they reminisced about what it used to be.
“It’s really crazy being back here and not having it be an active farm of ours,” Alexandra Okean said.
Blane Okean said he wants to see the land embrace “a new vibrancy.”
“This is not supposed to be how any sort of property looks,” Blane Okean said.
Growing up, people used to look surprised when Alexandra and Blane Okean revealed their dad was a farmer.
As kids in the 1990s and early 2000s, Blane Okean said their peers didn’t realize agriculture still played a role in Florida.
But for Blane and Alexandra Okean, that was their life. Blane Okean recalled how he learned to drive stick shift on a tractor and worked at his father’s nursery after school.
“I was always very proud of it, and being in farming versus other kids’ dads were, you know, lawyers and doctors,” Blane Okean said.
Looking forward
Paul Okean says he’s committed to working with everyone. Rather than just sell the land, he said he wants what is built there to be “right,” despite the frustrations that have come with trying to redevelop the land.
“All I can say is we listen and we do our homework, we evaluate our options and constantly do that,” he said.
The ability to work with his children also keeps Okean going.
“I’m lucky to have grown children that want to do something with me. It doesn’t get better than that, and to be able to pass the torch to them and for me to eventually take a much lesser role, it’s the ultimate for any parent,” he said.
Much like how agriculturists, nursery operators and equestrians carry on their practices generationally, the Park West land has become a legacy property, too — even if Paul Okean concedes he and his children are not developers by trade.
“I think there needs to be some respect for everyone’s land rights, and I’m very cognizant of that and that’s why I’m happy to work with my neighbors,” he said. “I want to do that and I continue to do that.”
