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What
is Exploration Pointe?
Exploration Pointe is a carefully planned
mixed-use community designed by a world-class team and Tech Village
Partners to be a place where residents can live, work, learn
and play all in one special place. As a low-commute community
where parents can spend time with children instead of in traffic,
Exploration Pointe will be a sustainable community with easy
access to schools, workplaces, shopping, nature and the best
of life.
With the arrival of Scripps in Palm Beach County,
Tech Village Partners set out to create a place that could support
the needs of a world-class biotechnology cluster, providing
jobs and helping to capture the unparalleled opportunities of
Florida’s
new biotech economy. A cornerstone of that effort is our desire
to leave an enduring legacy by being good stewards of our most
important resources: investing heavily in public education
and preserving the natural environment.
Exploration Pointe will
host scores of the biotechnology spin-off companies that Scripps
Florida is expected to generate and become a model for Florida’s
future, leading the way in education, economic opportunity, the
environment, and attainable housing. Tech Village Partners has
designed Exploration Pointe to grow into the crown jewel of Palm
Beach County – not only to be one
of its most productive assets, but a place residents can
be proud to call home.
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Is the public involved?
Yes. In 2005, Tech
Village Partners and its consultants conducted 42 separate visioning
workshops and hosted a two-day, charrette-style community design
forum. More than 1,000 people met with us in person or participated
over the Web, taking the time to help shape the vision that is
the foundation for Exploration Pointe – A Gardens Science & Technology
Community.
Those who participated in the process told
us that they wanted a place connected to nature that protects
and restores the natural environment – a sustainable place
to live, learn, work and play. They wanted a place of educational
enrichment and healthy living that will also house biotech companies,
generating economic opportunity and new medical cures and treatments.
Tech Village Partners took these suggestions
to heart and set out to build a place that will protect Palm
Beach County’s
quality of life and leave an enduring legacy for our children
to enjoy.
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Does the Exploration Pointe design promote
real preservation of the environment?
Yes. The creation of this
community will preserve and restore more than 2,000 acres of
distressed agricultural land, now plagued by invasive Brazilian
Pepper and Melaleuca. This will not only improve the quality
of life for our residents living connected to nature, it will
reconnect vital water flow-ways between the J.W. Corbett Wildlife
Management Area to the west and the Grassy Waters Preserve to
the east.
In addition, more than 730 acres are being
set aside for open green space such as parks and recreation areas,
lakes and buffer land adjacent to other properties. Taken together,
open space exceeds 50 percent of the 4,700-acre tract –-
a ratio surpassing the Florida Audubon Society’s recommendation
of preserving one acre of open space for each acre developed.
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How will Exploration
Pointe promote biotech in the region?
The arrival of Scripps
is expected to bring 16,000 jobs and $811.7 million to the region.
Exploration Pointe is poised to capture many of these benefits
when they arrive, offering the scores of biotech spin-off companies
that Scripps will lure to Palm Beach County the premier location
to set up shop in the region.
TVP will gradually build millions
of square feet of space for research, development and education
at Exploration Pointe, placing biotech research firms within
close proximity to one another and to Scripps. We have set
out to foster an atmosphere of synergy and cooperation that
will accelerate the race for cures for some of our most devastating
diseases. Also included in our design is a donation of 100
acres of land for a consortium of Florida’s
public universities to share as they build new centers dedicated
to medical and scientific breakthroughs.
Innovative cures
developed at Exploration Pointe will improve our quality
of life and herald a new economic future for Florida.
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What
about the education needs of residents in western Palm Beach
County?
Investing in quality education for Palm Beach County
and planning for the coming influx of biomedical workers is of
paramount importance to us and to the region. Tech Village Partners
will donate land on which to build two public elementary schools
and a middle school that together will accommodate 3,240 new
students. We are also planning a Discovery Center, medical
center and new university research complex. In addition, we
will donate land for a possible science-based high school that
should provide specialized, hands-on training to hundreds of
students from all over Palm Beach County.
Our community plan
has set aside these choice parcels of land to ensure that
future residents will enjoy excellent schools nearby – often
within walking distance – so parents
and teachers will be able to travel from home to school or
work and back again with ease.
These new schools will provide needed classroom space and
ensure ease of access to education for parents, students
and neighbors.
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How will Exploration Pointe affect traffic
in the region?
Exploration Pointe has been painstakingly
designed to be a mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented community. Exploration
Pointe will offer employment, bioscience research space, housing,
shopping, dinning and recreation all within its borders,
minimizing the need for residents to undertake long commutes
and minimizing congestion on Palm Beach County roadways and
the Interstate.
Additionally, Tech Village Partners will
invest millions of dollars in private funding to improve
county roadways so taxpayers won’t
have to – including to widen and extend PGA Boulevard.
We have planned neighborhoods, workplaces and
schools to be interconnected through a transit-friendly design
that encourages walking, biking, bus-riding and the use of alternative
transportation. We have committed to preserving more than 2,000
acres of the 4,700-acre community for green, open space, ensuring
limited, controlled growth.
Residents have more time to work and more time to spend with
their families if they can spend less time on the road. The
Exploration Pointe design allows people to easily connect at
work, at home, at the ball field and the grocery store, with
essential services within walking or biking distance.
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How will
Exploration Pointe affect my quality of life?
Since most of the land around the community is either protected
(J.W. Corbett to the west and Grassy Waters to the east),
or already developed (the Acreage to the south), there will
be very little impact to those existing communities other
than an increase in property values and greater access to
the schools, parks, goods, services and employment open to
the public at Exploration Pointe. We designed Exploration
not only to be an ideal place for residents to live, work
and play; we designed it to be a good neighbor to the surrounding
community.
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What kind of housing will Exploration Pointe
provide?
Creating a mix of housing opportunities for people of different
incomes is a critical goal of Exploration Pointe, a mixed-use
development that will offer a variety of new townhomes, condominiums,
single-family residences and rental apartments attainable
to people at many income levels.
We have designed Exploration
Pointe so families will be able to “grow in place,” staying
in the community they love because the variety of housing
available will accommodate their changing life situations
as the years go by.
Young professionals starting careers
can choose from downtown lofts, rental apartments and affordable
townhouses. When they’re
ready to start a family, they can move to a modest single-family
residence, enjoying a yard, front porch and sense of place.
As their children and careers grow, families can move into
a lakefront estate home, still no further from their workplace
than when they started out. And for residents reaching their
sunset years, Exploration Pointe will offer 150 assisted-living
units to care for the independent elderly.
Exploration Pointe
isn’t merely about housing; it is
about crafting a community where everyone can have a home,
a sense of place and a high quality of life.
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When will Exploration
Pointe be built?
Exploration Pointe will be built gradually
over 15 years, allowing the community to smoothly integrate into
the surrounding landscape. Phase one is tentatively scheduled
to commence in 2007, Phase two in 2012, and Phase three in 2018 – reaching “build
out” in 2022. In addition to our painstaking design
work to limit the need for outside automobile trips, this
measured pace of growth will allow for the sensible build-up
of infrastructure in the area and minimize strain on local
resources.
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Who designed Exploration Pointe?
Exploration
Pointe was designed by Looney Ricks Kiss Architects and WilsonMiller
community planners.
Looney Ricks Kiss Architects is an internationally
renowned architecture, urban planning and research firm.
Known as one of the most progressive community design firms in
the business, LRK has received more than 335 awards for its work,
including awards of excellence from the Urban Land Institute,
the American Planning Association and the Congress for
the New Urbanism. LRK designed well-known communities such as
Baldwin Park in Orlando, and the Ballpark District in Memphis,
Tennessee.
WilsonMiller, a Florida-based planning, design
and engineering firm, excels in large-scale projects that demand
land planning, landscape architecture, environmental engineering,
transportation consulting, survey and mapping, and urban design
expertise. WilsonMiller was recently lauded by the Engineering
News-Record, a top trade journal, as one of the top design
firms in the United States, and their sustainable design practices
have been recognized by the Council for Sustainable Florida
and 1000 Friends of Florida.
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Who are Tech Village Partners?
The entire team
is managed by one of the most trusted names among community developers
and homebuilders in the nation – Centex
Homes. It is supported by a crack team of some of the most
respected designers in America, including: Looney Ricks Kiss
and WilsonMiller (community planning), EW Consultants (environmental
engineering), Leftwich Consulting and Yvonne Ziel Traffic
Consultants (traffic engineering), Dunkelburger Engineering & Testing,
Fishkind & Associates (economic forecasting) and Trifecta
Constructions Solutions (green building).
As managing partner,
Centex has the experience, expertise and resources to carry
off a plan of this magnitude, and it has roots in the community.
That’s why Centex is managing Tech Village
Partners for the sole purpose of creating a hometown unlike
any place you’ve ever experienced.
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