West Palm Beach, FL Zoning Overlays & Bonuses: Downtown Design Guide (2026)

Sec. 94-108(a) states the site and building design requirements 'provide the basic requirements for development in the downtown area as they relate to the form and arrangement of buildings and other structures on sites' while still allowing significant design flexibility. Sec. 94-108(b) explains the building envelope concept: the requirements limit the area and volume of the envelope that may be filled with building components, and the envelope shown in the tables is intentionally larger than the permitted development capacity, so it cannot be read as granting extra capacity beyond what the subdistrict tables allow.

Sec. 94-108(c) lists six mandatory categories every downtown project must satisfy: building requirements (FAR, height, setbacks, footprint, open space, active uses, transparency and active-use liner depth, set per individual subdistrict table and defined in Sec. 94-109); building facades, which must meet the facade articulation requirements of Table IV-4 and any applicable architectural treatment standards; projections and encroachments per Table IV-5; passenger loading per Table IV-11; open space per Tables IV-6 and IV-7; and tree canopy per Table IV-8. Under Sec. 94-103, the DMP urban regulations govern the design of every building within the DMP area per the official DMP Zoning Atlas, and where the DMP rules conflict with the rest of Chapter 94's zoning and land development regulations, the DMP provisions take precedence, though the historic preservation ordinance still prevails over DMP rules and the Florida Building Code prevails over DMP rules whenever those conflict. Sec. 94-104 further makes any existing DMP-area building or use that predates these standards nonconforming rather than automatically compliant.