## Facts

- Big Blue Reserve is an approximately 92-acre undeveloped tract within the Village of Wellington containing wetlands and old-growth cypress trees.
- In 1972, Palm Beach County approved the Wellington Planned Unit Development (PUD) for the area under a negotiated development scheme.
- The PUD required preservation of Big Blue as a natural/open-space area and shifted (transferred) development density from Big Blue to other parcels in exchange for higher densities elsewhere in the project.
- In 1993, Palm Beach Polo, Inc. acquired property interests including Big Blue at a bankruptcy auction; its due-diligence materials indicated an open-space or conservation-type designation, but it did not further investigate county planning and zoning restrictions.
- After incorporation, Wellington adopted a 1999 comprehensive plan designating Big Blue as “Conservation,” largely mirroring the county plan and confirming the property’s longstanding open-space designation.
- Wellington sued for declaratory and injunctive relief to require Polo to restore, enhance, and preserve Big Blue under the PUD.
- Polo denied enforceable preservation obligations, arguing the preservation boundaries were not legally described and the provisions were too general; Polo also asserted takings-based counterclaims, including inverse condemnation and a claim under the Bert J. Harris, Jr., Private Property Rights Protection Act.

## Issues

1. Whether Wellington’s enforcement of the 1972 PUD’s preservation/restoration requirements and the later “Conservation” designation constituted an as-applied regulatory taking (inverse condemnation).
2. Whether the same actions imposed an “inordinate burden” compensable under the Bert J. Harris, Jr., Private Property Rights Protection Act.
3. Whether the PUD’s Big Blue preservation obligations were sufficiently definite to be judicially enforceable through declaratory and injunctive relief.

## Decision

- The Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the final judgment for Wellington.
- The court upheld declaratory and injunctive relief requiring Polo to comply with the PUD’s preservation, protection, and enhancement obligations for Big Blue.
- The court rejected Polo’s inverse condemnation claim, concluding no taking occurred because preservation of Big Blue was part of the original PUD bargain and development densities had been transferred away from Big Blue in exchange for higher densities elsewhere.
- The court rejected the Bert J. Harris Act claim, concluding enforcement of longstanding PUD restrictions and a confirming comprehensive-plan designation did not impose a compensable “inordinate burden.”
- The court rejected Polo’s vagueness/specificity challenges and treated the PUD’s preservation provisions as enforceable.

## Legal Principles

- A PUD functions as a negotiated land-use arrangement between the landowner and the zoning authority; obligations accepted as part of the PUD approval bind successors in interest.
- When a PUD expressly commits a parcel to conservation/open space and development density is transferred from that parcel to other land, later enforcement of the conservation commitment generally is not a compensable taking because the development value was accounted for within the original bargain.
- A later comprehensive-plan or zoning designation that confirms an existing open-space/conservation status, rather than imposing a materially new restriction, is less likely to support an as-applied takings claim.
- Government enforcement of preexisting, bargained-for land-use limitations typically does not constitute an “inordinate burden” under the Bert J. Harris Act when the asserted burden inheres in the established regulatory arrangement.

## Conclusion

The court enforced the 1972 PUD’s requirement that Big Blue remain preserved and held that Wellington’s actions—together with a comprehensive-plan designation confirming existing restrictions—did not amount to inverse condemnation or a compensable burden under the Bert J. Harris Act.


Palm Beach Polo, Inc. v. Village of Wellington, 918 So. 2d 988 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006)