The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 27

4B THE PALM BEACH POST SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 1, 1994 pardens development would be case of urban sprawl By WILLIAM HOWARD Palm Beach Post Staff Writer PALM BEACH GARDENS Developers are moving forward with plans to build Gardens Country Club 367 houses and a golf course on a triangular section of land across the Beeline Highway from Caloosa. Gardens Country Club will be in the city. But if it's approved by the city council later this year, it will be farther west than any other development in the city and will violate the city's urban-sprawl guidelines. The land, north of the new North County General Aviation Airport, is 6 miles west of the populated portions of Palm Beach Gardens. Urban-sprawl guidelines require new developments to be within a half-mile of populated areas.

But William Cordani has a development agreement with the city exempting Gardens Country Club from the sprawl rule. But that won't exempt his company, Gardens Country Club from having to pay an estimated $3 million to extend water and sewer lines west to the project. Once the utility lines are in place, further westward development is likely to follow along PGA Boulevard. Planners also say Gardens Country Club must make special provisions for police and fire protection because the project's distance from the heart of the city decreases response time. In an Aug.

5 memorandum, city planner Kim Glas says meeting fire and rescue average response time of 5 minutes and providing adequate police protection would require a public safety substation at the development, outfitted with a police car and an ambulance. The developer ultimately the homeowners would have to pay for staffing the substation with four police officers and six firefighters who double as paramedics. The city also is negotiating with the developer over the amount of land, or money in lieu of land, the company will donate to the city to meet recreation impact fee requirements. After consulting with environmental regulators, the developer has agreed to preserve 89 percent of the tract's wetlands and 25 percent of its uplands, where snowy egrets, Louisiana two-colored herons and Florida sandhill cranes have been seen. Gardens Country Club is expected to come before the city's Planning and Zoning Commission again on Tuesday.

Cordani said he hopes to get city council approval for the project late this year and start construction in mid-1995. Homes in the golf course development are expected to sell for $300,000 to $500,000. STAFF GRAPHIC Indianlown Rd, Caloosa Estates C-18 Canal Donald. Ross M. Royal Palm Hood Rd.

Beach Colony is, i res I PGA Blvd. Proposed Gardens Country Club s. development Jl La Eliminating epithet from county records not easy, officials say- nK -7-7-- ir If-" i i'r LAKE WORTH Herman Jackson, 86, a resident since 1931, says someone erred in labeling Osborne a 'colored' section: 'This is the OSBORNE From IB intolerance. Retha Lowe is forg- ing the effort, having met or spo-' ken numerous times in the past six months with the mayor, city attorney and County Commissioner Maude Ford Lee about remov-ing the name. "I'll keep nagging and nagging them until it gets changed," she vowed.

A patriarch of 63 years Osborne's history begins on I.Washington Avenue, home of the l.first paved road and construction for several of the community's first homes. Herman Jackson, 86, has lived 'on the street for 63 years. For Jackson, considered by many a neighborhood patriarch, this is home. A former gardener and land- for white families in the city, his love for the work is reflected at his home, where he i tends daily to lush rows of peri-winkles, corn and coffee plants enclosed behind his rust-colored Someone made a mistake when labeling this a "colored" section, he insists. "This is the south end of Lake Worth is what it is." Bahamian lineage evident The city's zoning code in 1954 required that black residents live Osborne.

No longer segregated, the community has expanded into ar hybrid of black, white, Puerto Rican and Mexican cultures. A total of 510 homeowners live in jtHe area, including those who live 'around the Osborne plat. The struggles against racial indignities aren't new to this community. For some residents, the fight dates to the '20s, when blacks were forced from neighboring Lantana by the Ku Klux Klan, according to the book Early Lantana: Her Neighbors and More. Yet not all times have been bad for black Osborne residents, most of whom are of Bahamian descent.

According to historian Spencer Pompey, that Bahamian lineage is a signature of the community, evidenced by residents' lilting speech and in the spice of such Sunday dinner dishes as smothered fish and onions and pigeon peas and rice. "Life was not bad during that time, said former resident Theresa Kanu, remembering the '50s when she and her friends would gather coconuts from her aunt's yard, then punch the shells' soft spots to drink the milk inside. But the stigma of segregation was still there. "Primarily, your world was limited to that area," said Kanu. A complicated change Eliminating the word "colored" from county records is not easy, city officials have found.

According to state guidelines, the change means resurveying the land. The survey would account for property lines that because of changes in ownership have become distorted or no longer exist. For Osborne's 80 lots, resurveying could cost as much as $24,000, or $250 per person, says city planner Gene Nowak. To make the change official, all prop erty owners and their mortgage holders would have to sign the new document. Even with all the signatures, the word "colored" still would show up as a matter of record.

This time, the term would appear urider the new community name, Npwak said. That detail doesn't concern who lives in a subdivision west of Osborne and is a member oV; the community group called Citizens on Task. The issue has been a priority for her since 1991, when City Commissioner Dan Shepherd told COT members about the plat at one of their meetings. I Shepherd ran across the name while thumbing through a county plat book. A plat is a map of an area prepared by its owner.

Palm Beach County passed its first plat ordinance in 1973 after a development boom in the late '60s. "I thought, 'Gee, this is he recalled. "We look Lake worth Rd. 1 JjM Lake Hal I Worth 5 -o JS S. 12th Ave, '4 a WmM Lantana 0 Lantana Rd.

Il Mile 1 gJ LANNIS WATERSStaff Photographer Osborne is the only neighborhood in Palm Beach County ever legally designated as That was in 1917 in the county's plat book. Residents are fighting to get the designation removed CAROLINE E. COUIGStaff Photographer south end of Lake Worth Osborne residents endured the prejudice, in part, by constructing a solid web of families that emphasized heritage, church and education. Several families, including the Grimeses and Know-leses, intermarried, rooting many in the community. Wade Hardemon intended to stay only a week after arriving from Cordele, in 1952 to visit family.

Then he started a Laundromat and spent 27 years building houses and jails for cities in the county before becoming pastor of New Hope Baptist Church. "My people are here, that's what made me love it," he said pf his 42 years in the community. Religion a focal point Religion has always been focal point of the community. Osborne has six churches, two of which served as elementary schools for children before integration. For Richard Knowles, 65, the solace of church was needed to temper the boyhood memory of lingering ash from a burning cross across the railroad tracks bordering the community.

"It did have its effect you didn't expect any better," he said. Knowles' Bahamian family settled in Osborne in the 1920s. His father, a fruit picker in Indian River County, built his own home in 1925, and proceeded to construct other homes and businesses for residents. i The Grimes family also built houses and resident Odums, whp now works part time for his son's sod company, built his own barber shop and an eight-unit motel in the community. "Everybody helped each other," said Knowles.

"You couldn't buy ready-made houses over the railroad tracks." Though that injustice has been abated by federal anti-housing discrimination laws, the subtle, good-old-boy messages of retaining the status quo remain in the name, "Colored Addition." "It's like the old people have done it this way for so long they have refused for anybody to come in and say this is wrong," said state Rep. Green. For several residents, that battle continues. "Osborne would be all right" offered Hardemon. "But this Osborne Colored Addition doesn't sound good.

It never sounded good." pretty books. bad having that on our Mayor Rodney Romano agrees and says he would like the plat renamed by the time his term is up in March. He has written and spoken to state representatives and has met with Maude Ford Lee. As a sign of optimism, he's considering a contest in which Osborne residents choose the new name. "The fact that this is a matter of public record should be an embarrassment to elected officials that represent Osborne on any level," he said.

But Romano and other commissioners are less resolved about committing taxpayer dollars to the cause. "There's no way I would be able to commit that kind of money," Romano said. He thinks residents would rather dedicate the dollars to recreation and other community projects. Said Shepherd: "I want it changed, but I don't know if we can overspend to see it changed." This logic doesn't suit Lowe. "I feel there is nothing else in the community that needs to be changed more than this," said Lowe, who thinks residents have been regarded as second-class too long.

She says it's important to shield future generations from what she calls the shock one gets when preparing to buy a home in the area. The racial reference also threatens the community's economic growth, she says. People desiring to invest in the community, through businesses or other development, have been dissuaded from pursuing the plans because of the name. "The first thing that's thrown up to us is, 'Why are you allowing this on the Legislators say act locally Romano is dumbfounded by the difficulties posed in renaming the land. City officials, he says, are left running in bureaucratic circles, from state government to the county and back to the state in pursuit of a cheap solution.

They asked state Rep. Sharon Merchant, R-North Palm Beach, if the legislature would pass a bill exempting the city from getting a new survey. She told them it was a local issue and suggested the city pass a resolution to change the name. Such a move would be cosmetic, howLv r-cause it wouldn't alter MARK HEMPHILLStaff Artist black police officer in 1951. "If you saw a guy wielding a stick and chewing tobacco, you knew what to do get out of there." For many, coming to South Florida meant assuming jobs in carpentry, restaurants or on citrus farms and hoping for perhaps a pinch more pay and security.

In Osborne, they found sawdust roads and few city services until the late '40s and early '50s when garbage collection, indoor plumbing and running water began trickling in. The social code of the day, popularly termed Jim Crow, mandated that children be bused to black-only schools in Delray Beach. And blacks had to be out of downtown Lake Worth by dusk. Whites called Osborne the Quarters, in reference to areas set aside for slaves on antebellum plantations. Exposure to racial discrimination through name-calling and limited job opportunities shaped many longtime residents' attitudes toward changing the plat.

"People my age got used to being segregated," Jackson said of Washington Avenue. "That's all they knew." Harold Grimes, 38, says he can understand that sentiment, but it's time the issue be resolved. He recalls seeing as a boy television coverage of civil rights crusader Martin Luther King Jr. leading marchers in Alabama past angry police dogs and officers armed with water hoses. "Being young I wondered why people would do each other that way." the plat on county records.

"There's nothing to my knowledge we can do to help them," Merchant said. "I suggest they live with their history and move forward in a better direction." Rep. Ed Healey, D-West Palm Beach, who serves on the House Community Affairs Committee that handles local bills, says a city ordinance would work. State Rep. Addie Green, D-Mangonia Park, also thinks the problem can be solved locally.

As mayor of Mangonia Park, just north of West Palm Beach, she had a liquor store owner remove a sign with the reference "knotty head" in it, she says. "The average white person would pass by it and think nothing of it, but it deals with black culture," Green said pf the racial stereotype. County officials, however, are unsure if cities have the authority, by ordinance only, to make the change. "It has to be in conformance with state plat law," said Ken Rogers, land development director with the county's engineering and public works department. Stringent laws on platting Florida's rigid requirements concerning plats are designed to protect home and business owners from fraud and liability claims as a result of lots being illegally sold to other people or configured incorrectly, says Jack Murnam, a land surveyor for the county.

"Land business lends itself to fraud, and that's what platting or dinances are for," he said. A classic example is the 1925 platting of Palm Beach County Farms, which runs from Okeechobee Road south into central Broward County. Improper platting led to overlaps in property lines, causing confusion for land owners, he says. Murnam is concerned that messing with the plat record could lead to similar results. High legal fees also might be incurred from title companies challenging ownership of lots.

Lee wants "colored" removed altogether and plans to have County Attorney Joe Mount investigate a solution. Moved from Lantana Some of the first families to settle in Osborne came from the western edge of Lantana in the early '20s, shortly after they were forced out of town by the Ku Klux Klan, according to Early Lantana: Her Neighbors and More. At the time, Lantana's charter stated no blacks or foreigners could live in the town, according to city historian Mary Lineham. "There were people who felt strongly that they didn't want them in town at all," said Linehan, who has lived in Lantana since 1925. Other blacks migrated from the Caribbean and southern states, particularly Georgia, where town names such as Cordele and Americus roll effortlessly off residents' tongues.

"In Georgia, all Negroes knew their place," said P.W. Odums, who was hired as the city's first.