25 Year Of History

The Palms West Chamber of Commerce Looks Back on Its First Quarter Century

 Original Palms West Chamber Board

The original Palms West Chamber of Commerce board
included (back row) Bob Markey Sr., Marge Isadore,
Steve Addler and Connie Manske; (middle row)
Sharon Edelman, Mike Abate and Dennis Witskowski;
and (front row) Len Bierer and James Bruggerman.

By Deborah Welky

It's hard to believe that it has already been 25 years since the Palms West Chamber of Commerce was transformed from idea to reality. Over the past quarter century, this initial vision of what a western communities chamber should be has changed in many exciting ways, but one thing has remained constant - all changes came through the hard work of Palms West Chamber members.

Unpaid chamber volunteers gave up nights, weekends, early mornings and valuable weekday time to look beyond what their chamber could do for them toward what they could do for their chamber. Sound familiar? The results have been astounding! We've grown from 15 to 850 members, expanded our  membership boundaries to include much of central Palm Beach County, and formulated committees with the representative power necessary to influence county and state decisions.

In the Begining

Decades ago, "the western communities" were not what they are today. In fact, much of the land west of the turnpike was nothing more than unimproved lots surrounded by native brush. The Village of Royal Palm Beach was incorporated in 1959, but viewed for many years as not much more than a golf haven for retirees. Wellington was one big strawberry plantation, and Loxahatchee Groves - well, it was still an unincorporated rural community miles from anywhere. When developers occasionally did take an interest, the fact that they were doing so miles from Florida's coastline was something no one east of I-95 could understand. What was the point of living so far from the water? Didn't a Florida lifestyle depend on being close to the ocean? Other developers watched and waited for the western developments to fail.

If the west was mentioned at all, the "powers that be" spoke with amusement. But people started to take an interest when land developers working within Wellington's Acme Improvement District did something no one had done before - they voluntarily filed plans for the layout and build-out of their proposed new community with Palm Beach County. When conceived in the early 1970s, Wellington was the first planned unit development (PUD) they had ever

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