By Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News
Those who try to keep track of Palm Beach real estate listings, property sales and even new building permits know that the monthly reports issued by the Rabideau Klein law firm are an invaluable resource.
Take the firm’s just-released Rabideau Klein Brief for October, which tallied up the value of building permits issued for large-scale construction projects during the three months that ended Sept. 30.
The grand total of the third-quarter valuations attached to the permits approached $80 million, a 31% jump over the same period last year, the report said.
And the total number of permits was also up, from 72 in last year’s third quarter to 98 for the same period this year, according to the report from the law firm, which is headed by attorneys Guy Rabideau and David Klein.
The report tracks building permits for projects valued at $100,000 or more.
The third-quarter valuations for single-family permits were led by one with a value of $6.38 million issued for 304 Maddock Way on the North End. That permit was one of four issued in September that together totaled more than $9.3 million for the same residential compound on Maddock Way, a lakefront cul-de-sac.
The Maddock Way permits were issued for a four-bedroom house — with a separate garage building and a three-bedroom guesthouse — under construction on a double lot with a combined 1.9 acres and 185 feet of lakefront. The property runs from the Intracoastal Waterway to North Lake Way.
Rabideau Klein’s report says the recent permits’ valuations don’t cover the work for laying the foundations of the buildings. That work began early this year under different permits.
Tracking the project through courthouse and Town Hall records reinforces the notion that the planning and construction of large-scale estates in Palm Beach can take a while.
In February 2021, investments executive and private-equity specialist Doug Ostrover and his wife, Julie, bought the two properties comprising the Maddock Way land using a limited liability company, property records show. The lots changed hands simultaneously for a recorded $40.24 million.
With ties to Greenwich, Connecticut, billionaire Doug Ostrover is co-CEO of Blue Owl Capital Corp., headquartered in New York City.
Last summer, the Palm Beach Architectural Commission and the Town Council signed off on the project, which is being built by Livingston Builders Inc. to a design by architect Joeb Moore of Joeb Moore & Partners Architects in Greenwich. Moore collaborated on the project with the architect of record, Smith and Moore Architects of West Palm Beach, the Architectural Commission was told last year.
The Ostrovers’ property shares the Maddock Way lakefront with two town landmarks — a house converted from the Old Bethesda-By-The-Sea church and a much-renovated pioneer home known as Duck’s Nest.
Stretching along the lakefront, the Ostrovers’ main house will have two stories and clean-lined architecture influenced by Italian Renaissance and Mediterranean- and Spanish Revival-style buildings, the architectural plans show. In all, the structures will measure about 22,200 total square feet, and construction could be complete by the end of 2026.
A key element of the design was preserving several so-called “specimen” trees that have earned protection under a town preservation ordinance. The grounds for the new house were designed by landscape architect Mario Nievera of Nievera Williams Design.
“I find pretty much everything about this house to be perfect,” Architectural Commissioner Betsy Shiverick said about the project in July 2023, when the board approved the design in a 5-2 vote during its initial review.
The land the house will stand on has been vacant since the Maddock family platted the Landmark Estates subdivision in 2008. The family initially had sold the two lots to other owners before the Ostrovers bought them in March 2021 through a limited liability company named 304 Maddock Way LLC.
Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates handled both sides of the 2021 sales.