©CRA-Carlo-Ratti

If West Palm Beach’s building official approves, it would be the tallest wooden structure in Florida. What looks like a giant honeycomb — a never-seen-before, 25-story addition to West Palm Beach’s skyline — is slated to rise atop century-old city history in a downtown neighborhood with building height limits less than half that. Plans show billionaire developer Jeff Greene is proposing a tower, “MiMar,” that promises a seaview in each of the 366 units stacked on an undesignated historical structure that once served as a city fire station in the early 1900s. And it would be made from some retro material: wood, which the architect is calling “a hybrid mass timber and concrete structural system.” Whether it should be built that way in a state with a propensity for hurricanes and termites is a matter of splintering opinions. But its height, exempted under a state law passed in 2023, is not up for debate.