The Other Palm Beach

Its splashy sister city may hog the spotlight, but Mayor Keith James sees a brighter future for West Palm Beach, Florida. To end the tale of two cities, he’s investing in a new generation of his town’s entrepreneurs.

Words by Moni Basu | Photos by Alfonso Duran

On a balmy May afternoon, West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James takes me on a tour of his fast-changing city. Not far from where Hepburn grew up is a growing, glittering skyline erected by real estate moguls like Related Companies, which built Water Tower Place in Chicago and Hudson Yards in New York. Not long ago, few people lived in or even visited downtown West Palm. But now, Clematis Street and Rosemary Square overflow with restaurants, shops, and nightlife. And about 10,000 people, three times more than at the start of this century, inhabit apartments and condos in the heart of town. 

This is not the West Palm Beach of my college days in Florida; then, it was viewed, at least by outsiders, as the ugly stepsister of Palm Beach. West Palm was solely a steppingstone, a way to reach Palm Beach, the long, skinny barrier island that is home to an estimated 30 billionaires and has in recent years received constant attention because of a certain former president. 

Despite its name, West Palm Beach does not actually have a beach — its waterfront is along the intracoastal Lake Worth Lagoon. Three bridges connect the Palm Beaches, once worlds apart but increasingly, not. West Palm now tops the rankings of American cities gaining popularity among the uber-wealthy, especially East Coast millionaires from Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City.

The mayor and I drive by the waterfront Olara towers, where condos can cost upward of $7 million, and a new office building at 360 Rosemary boasting almost 300,000 square feet of space, with 10-foot-high windows on every floor. Prominent law firms and financial companies have relocated here, and I’ve often heard West Palm Beach referred to as Wall Street South.

James takes enormous pride in the role he has played in transforming his hometown, a city he has led since he was first elected in 2019. When he was campaigning, he vowed to make public safety a priority no matter the ZIP code. Just a few days before my arrival here in mid-May, a large sting operation resulted in 29 arrests on charges of racketeering, fentanyl dealing, and prostitution, which was seen by some as a significant step toward erasing organized crime. 

During James’ tenure, crime has gone down, property values up. But with growth and gentrification come the problems other American cities have experienced: a lack of affordable housing, traffic congestion, and an expanding wealth gap.

Development, James tells me, has to be inclusive. And it has to be intentional. He cannot support ventures, he says, that threaten to leave behind the very people who built this region. 

“We can't have a tale of two cities,” he tells me. “If our entire community is not healthy, you know, all of those wonderful gleaming, shiny office buildings that are going up, you're not going to find tenants in them because we're going to be in the same situation as San Francisco or New York or others, where you have such a wide disparity between the haves and have nots.

“I want to take advantage of this moment in our city's history and be proactive,” he says.

That history is complicated but not different from other places in the South that are grappling with a brutal past of racial injustice. And James is acutely aware of the past.

Standard Oil tycoon Henry Morrison Flagler, the man responsible for developing the Atlantic coast of Florida, arrived in the West Palm Beach region in 1893. Flagler described the area, home to the Jaega Tribe, as “a veritable paradise” and connected it to Miami with the Florida East Coast Railway, built by Black laborers.

Flagler harbored grand plans to turn Palm Beach into a playground for the rich and erect a city on the west side of Lake Worth for service workers. 

He used Black laborers to build two majestic Palm Beach hotels, The Breakers and the Royal Poinciana. He wanted construction workers to live close by in the Styx, a community of palmetto and driftwood shacks, boardinghouses and shanties, according to historian Everee Jimerson Clarke, whose grandfather once lived there. 

The men who did the menial jobs at white-owned estates occupied the Styx until landowners began to realize the value of their properties on the shores of the turquoise Atlantic. All sorts of stories exist about what caused a Black exodus from Palm Beach, but in her book, Pleasant City, West Palm Beach, Clarke attributes it to a fire and unsanitary conditions.

Styx residents were forced to find housing in segregated West Palm Beach, mostly in the neighborhoods just north and west of downtown like Coleman Park and Pleasant City. This was where the butlers, nannies, maids, construction workers, and chauffeurs who served the rich residents of Palm Beach lived. And still do.

Recently, the city of West Palm Beach has redeveloped several buildings in Pleasant City to resemble the shotgun-style homes that once peppered the streets. Called the Styx Promenade, the mixed-use project pays homage to African American history and intends to return the vibrancy that once was here.

It’s one of several city undertakings James mentions on our tour. Throughout our conversations, he brings up a number often: 93 million. That’s how many dollars the city has invested in underserved neighborhoods while he has been mayor.

We stop by a community garden established by the city in conjunction with Florida A&M University, a historically Black university in Tallahassee. We are within walking distance of downtown’s enormous wealth, and yet there are no grocery stores with fresh food in this neighborhood. 

“This is a food desert,” James says. “That’s why this affiliation with FAMU is important.”

A young boy notices our parked black SUV and rushes up to say hello to James as though Jay-Z had just arrived at the Marcy Projects.

“The mayor! The mayor is here!” he yells. 

In the garden, I meet Nyota King-Sanyang, a 40-year-old Black woman who works for the FAMU agricultural Extension program but also owns her own African apparel and accessories import business, which she launched in 2018 after visiting The Gambia. She, too, has been touched by the mayor’s programs. She feels lucky to be living in a Pleasant City house that her father owns. Otherwise, she might not be able to afford the rent.

“Mayor James does have a lot of positive initiatives,” she says. “But that to me is a double-edged sword, like, property taxes going through the roof.”

With all the new construction, property taxes on her house shot up from $1,100 a year to $3,500 last year. 

“So how do you satisfy everyone? I guess that’s his issue,” King-Sanyang says. “Mayor James is doing the best he can with the hand he was dealt. Change is hard.”

A $20 million city project called Coleman Park Renaissance includes 43 new, affordable homes and neighborhood commercial space for minority-owned businesses constructed on 11 vacant lots donated by the city.

Another venture James points out is the redevelopment of Currie Park, named after George Currie, the man responsible for developing Pleasant City after Black people were forced out of Palm Beach. Currie named the streets with words like Beautiful, Merry, Contentment, Comfort, and Cheery because he felt Black people were innately happy, Clarke writes in her book. Many of the names have now been replaced with numbers, but some remain.

I gaze out of the car window at the dilapidation and decay: weeds bursting out of cracked concrete, burglar bars and trash-strewn lots. This was once a neighborhood that truly reflected all the emotions the streets were named after. There were thriving businesses and vibrant homes. Musicians like Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong came to play at The Sunset Lounge. 

That was before poverty choked Black neighborhoods and burdened them with crime, drugs, and homelessness. The challenges for the city seem daunting, but James remains optimistic. 

“As the CEO of this city, I use my bully pulpit to encourage the private sector to invest in programs that will benefit the residents of the blighted neighborhoods,” James says. 

A big part of his plan includes entrepreneurial development. To that end, he applied to be a part of the first cohort of fellows in a program run by E Pluribus Unum, a nonprofit launched in 2019 by former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to tackle the daunting problem of racial inequity in America. 

E Pluribus Unum conducted an exhaustive survey across 13 Southern states and used its findings to come up with three major goals: to cultivate leaders committed to realizing a more inclusive vision for the South; to champion policies intended to reverse the legacy of Jim Crow; and to change the narratives that perpetuate racism. 

James used the $75,000 he received as an Unum fellow as seed money to launch Jumpstart Academy, a program intended to equip minority small business owners with the skills needed to develop an idea into a sustainable company.

“Communities, particularly communities of color, that have strong entrepreneurial ecosystems are healthier,” James says. 

His goal was to reach people like King-Sanyang and the Hepburns, who have big ideas but little access to resources like banks that won’t lend to businesses that are too tiny or without established credit scores. 

Jumpstart Academy also allows business owners to network with peers and more experienced entrepreneurs who help lead the 10 weeks of classes and sessions.

King-Sanyang told me that before graduating from Jumpstart Academy, her business skills were poor. She didn’t know how to keep an inventory of her imports from The Gambia or pay business taxes. 

Unum Executive Director Scott Hutcheson lauds James and his efforts to lift all boats. Equity, Hutcheson says, does not have to be a political buzzword. It’s about giving people what they need to accomplish their goals.

“We are divided by design,” he tells me over the phone. “People start their journeys and have access to the American dream at different points. And we created those points. This is not an accident.

“What Mayor James is doing — getting Black-owned, Black-serving businesses up and running — is an equity move.”

After our tour of dizzying development in downtown West Palm Beach, I ask James the quintessential question: What difference can one small program make? It seems so unfairly matched against the billions of dollars being invested in real estate and infrastructure. 

“I really wanted to have something which touched people where they were, and where you can have a tangible demonstration that lives have been changed,” he says. “The academy expanded the universe of possibilities for [Hepburn] and her family. And that's what it's all about.”

Then James repeats words I have heard him utter before: “Every 1,000-mile journey begins with the first step.”

Nyota King-Sanyang, 40, works for the FAMU agricultural Extension program in addition to owning her own African apparel and accessories import business. She has been positively impacted by Mayor James’ investment in previously overlooked communities.

James’ own journey began in Wichita, Kansas. When most boys were playing baseball or putting together LEGOs, James played with fire. He began to understand institutional racism in America.

His mother, Patricia, moved to Kansas from a small town in Oklahoma to attend Wichita State University. But in her freshman year, she met James’ father, a man who was her opposite: a bad boy, a high school dropout, and a pool hustler who wore his cigarette pack in his T-shirt sleeve like James Dean. 

Patricia James was just 17 when her son was born. She dropped out of college and began working as a maid to raise her son. At the end of his third-grade year, the principal of his all-Black school called the mother and son into his office. 

“Your son has performed so well on the standardized tests that we are giving you an option,” the principal told Patricia. 

He could stay at his school and skip fourth grade, or he could enter an accelerated learning class. But the latter came with a catch. This was two years before the Wichita school board first began to reverse racial isolation in its public schools, and the accelerated class was only offered at the all-white school across town. 

Patricia didn’t flinch and immediately chose the white school, and so, at age 9, James integrated an entire elementary school by himself. It was tough. He was isolated and verbally abused. Forced to develop survival skills, he learned how to maneuver through tough situations; how to make friends out of enemies.

“The experience of being the sole Black student in an entire elementary school forced me to learn how to survive and succeed in a predominantly white environment at a very young age,” James says.

“Those lessons have remained with me during my adolescent and adult years. I continue to hone [them] to this day while our country is becoming increasingly browner and Blacker. I don't think it's any mystery that the power structures continue to be controlled by those who generally are of Caucasian background. So how do you find ways to succeed in those environments?”

In high school, he dreamed about one day having a job that required a briefcase. No one in his family had gone to college. He didn’t know any so-called white-collar workers.

“There was something wonderfully mysterious about working at a job where you carried a briefcase as opposed to a lunch pail,” James says.

He was a good student — mostly because he did not want to disappoint his mother. She had made sure he never felt poor and eventually worked her way up from being a domestic worker to a switchboard operator to management at Southwestern Bell (now AT&T). He also felt a calling to help people. Law school seemed like the right fit. He had never even heard of Ivy League colleges or traveled east of Kansas City, Missouri, when he applied to Harvard. 

He eventually graduated from Harvard Law School and joined a Philadelphia law firm, finally carrying a briefcase to work every day. The firm transferred him to sunny West Palm in 1987, and he ended up raising his two children there. 

He had not thought about politics until he decided to join the city commission in 2011. He realized, he says, that his life experiences could help turn around struggling West Palm Beach. And he enjoyed having a seat at the table where significant decisions about the future were going down. 

In 2019, he became the first Black elected mayor since the city rewrote its charter in 1991 to give the position the power to oversee the government instead of acting as a ceremonial head. 

“This means I am the CEO,” he says. “And that really provided me with a significant opportunity to make a difference.”

By 8:30 a.m. on this Friday in May, one corner of the vast downtown convention center teems with community movers and shakers at the annual Chamber of Commerce awards, an event that showcases the entrepreneurial preeminence of Palm Beach County. Folks who run mom-and-pop shops. Others who built this city’s shiny skyline. Politicians and policymakers. Some men wear trendy suits, bare ankles showing in between slim pant legs and no-show socks. The women show off body-con dresses, patent leather stilettos, and Sunshine State tans. 

James hobnobs with the high and mighty of West Palm Beach, and two images appear in my mind. The first is of the boy who the day before had run up to the mayor as though he were royalty. James had been just as at ease with him as he is now with the city’s powerbrokers. I also think about James when he was about the age of that little boy. What must it have been like to be the only 9-year-old Black child in an all-white elementary school?

He’d told me how he had learned the deeper meaning of the racial divide in America and how he would never let it hold him back. He had learned how to dance. And dance well.

I can see James’ verve in Gabrielle Hepburn’s eyes. When she got laid off from her job at Nissan during the pandemic, she decided she would become her own master. She launched 561 Customs, a company that manufactures personalized decals, apparel, and rugs. 

The company is very much in a startup phase; she and her husband still use his parents’ garage as their office. Their goal is to make $15,000 a month and in the process help other businesses owned by people of color.

“561 Customs, LLC, was founded on family and the passion to build generational wealth within our minority communities,” the company’s website says. “Our custom business branding products and services are strategically created to help build a solid foundation, scale, and pivot a small business idea into a generational legacy. When you hire us as your personal business branding specialists, our goal is to equip you with all the tools you need to successfully market and grow your business.”

She wants one day to open Entrepreneur’s Corner and teach others like her how to market their ideas and products and apply for grants, something she enjoys doing in her spare time. 

Hepburn credits the mayor for investing money and energy into developing minority-owned businesses. And for the transformation in West Palm Beach. 

“I grew up in the middle of the ghetto, infested with drugs,” she tells me. “Clearly, what we were doing before wasn’t working.”

She believes some people just want to see what has been, and not what can be. Some people, she says, are comfortable with their neighborhood status quo. But not her.

“The mayor has put resources after resources into people who feel they are left behind,” she says. “You’ve got to try.”

She would like one day to relocate to the Bahamas — her husband, Chris, was born to a Bahamian man and a Filipino woman. She dreams of owning a large house where she can live with her mother, her in-laws, her entire family. She dreams of retiring early and savoring the sand and surf and giving her children the best in life, a life that offers the things she and her husband grew up seeing across the water on the barrier island where rich white people live. 

She met the mayor last December at a graduation ceremony for Jumpstart Academy. She felt like she was speaking not to a politician but to an uncle or a grandfather. She thought he was genuine when he spoke of his dreams of lifting up business owners like herself, in his pursuit of equity. She even saw him shed tears.

In James, she saw a man who chased his dreams. She would do the same.

This story was made in partnership with E Pluribus Unum

Moni Basu is the director of the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Georgia. She is an award-winning veteran journalist who worked at CNN, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and various other news outlets. Born in Kolkata, India, Basu grew up straddling two cultures. As such, her work has explored race and identity as well as immigration. She has reported exhaustively from South Asia and the Middle East. Her 2012 e-book, Chaplain Turner’s War, grew from a series of stories on an Army chaplain in Iraq. A platoon sergeant named her “Evil Reporter Chick,” which became the name of her blog, and she was featured as a war reporter in a Marvel comics series.

Alphonso Duran is a photographer based out of Miami. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Fader, and Vogue. When he is not working on assignments, he is usually hanging at the beach making personal work.

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