Spotlight On: Jonathan Evans, City Manager, City of Riviera Beach
June 2025 — Jonathan Evans, city manager of the city of Riviera Beach, spoke with Invest: about investing in infrastructure and tourism to continue the city’s growth. “Riviera Beach is an ethnically, socially, and economically diverse city. We’re a small city with big city assets. We are a community on the verge of our renaissance period,” Evans said.
What are your immediate priorities for Riviera Beach?
The city of Riviera Beach is in the process of building a 400-million-gallon-per-day water treatment plant to address the city’s future capacity needs. We’re also investing $400 million to address our aging infrastructure, specific to a new police station, new fire station, new city hall, and new parks and recreation amenities. In March 2024, voters approved general obligation bonds of $115 million for the first time. This will fund investments in infrastructure and quality of life, including our roadways, water, and sewer infrastructure. We want our community to see a tangible benefit from the investments.
What makes the city of Riviera Beach an ideal place to live, work and play in?
Riviera Beach is an ethnically, socially, and economically diverse city. We’re a small city with big city assets. We have one of Florida’s four deepwater ports, Palm Beach County’s widest and longest municipal beach, and access to I-95 and railway travel. We have many transportation assets and are located quite nicely in Palm Beach County, making our city a desirable place to live and work. We have many Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies, including Cheney Brothers, Sysco, FPL, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi. We have one of the best offshore diving locations in the world under the Blue Heron Bridge at Phil Foster Park. The Lake Worth Lagoon is a protected estuary with aquatic life only found in the Caribbean. We are a community on the verge of our renaissance period. There is over $2.5 billion worth of economic activity on the Broadway Corridor with major names like Safe Harbor Marines, Viking Yachts, and many other marine-based industries.
What are the main sectors or industries driving growth and employment in Riviera Beach?
The major factor for commerce is logistics. With close proximity to transportation assets and the Port of Palm Beach, we sit as a commodities hub for the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. We are only 57 miles away from Freeport Grand Bahama, a major port we conduct business with. We have a rail spur that comes out of the Port of Palm Beach. There are, on average, 33 trains coming through our community on a daily basis, moving a lot of commerce. We are fortunate to have a lot of logistics-based companies here. The Amazon facility here is a last-mile facility that completes same-day deliveries. PepsiCola has a bottling facility here that bottles and exports products.
To what extent does the city benefit from its strategic location in the heart of South Florida, and how does geography play into attracting business and investment?
It’s a short drive to Orlando, Miami, and Tampa. We’re in a very desirable location. Having the port here creates quick access to the ocean. From a tourism perspective, we have many great tourism assets, such as the Singer Hotel and the Amrit Wellness Resort, a $297 million project that impacted the tax roll in our community and has only been open to the public for a year and a half. From a logistics perspective, we are only 15 minutes away from Palm Beach International Airport. Whether it’s by train, boat, plane, or automobile, you can get virtually anywhere from Riviera Beach.
To what extent are PPPs a key aspect in bringing economic development to Riviera Beach?
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are the cornerstone of economic development in the government space in Riviera Beach. Local governments can’t do the heavy lifting on their own, so we need to work with private providers and look at things differently. We have several PPP relationships for economic development activities in our community. The transition is going to be more of that model than a traditional design-bid-build situation. City Hall will be built as a result of a PPP arrangement, as well as many recreational amenities. PPPs are commonplace in the government space and will be a common development opportunity in the city.
What new amenities, services, or initiatives will provide residents with the best quality of life?
We facilitated the construction of two new fire stations. The first facility is roughly 30,000 square feet, which is large enough to accommodate two fire companies. That facility has won almost every design construction and aesthetic award for municipal and fire facilities in the state. We’ve also brought online a library with a cafe, STEM lab, and testing center for college admissions and employers. Our second new fire station houses our emergency operations center, a state-of-the-art facility that was built with $1 million from the state of Florida. We have a new police station and new fire station on Singer Island that will break ground in the first quarter of 2026. We are moving forward, in collaboration with the Palm Beach County School Board, to utilize our space to build $55 million in recreational amenities. We have plans to do substantial roadway and drainage infrastructure. We have an aggressive plan, and in the next five to 10 years, people are going to be asking themselves if they are in the same community because of the noticeable investments the city is making.
What measures or initiatives is the city implementing to attract more tourism, visitors, and leisure travelers?
We have put out a public solicitation for our marina village for a PPP to create a town center, Riviera Beach’s equivalent of West Palm Beach’s CityPlace. This particular assembly of parcels will become a commerce node with shops, restaurants, and boutiques on the water at Lake Worth Lagoon. There will be redevelopment opportunities happening that will be a major tourism push. We are working with our partners at the Port of Palm Beach to expand their cruise terminal. Bringing in new ships will result in longer cruise outputs. We see a good number of visitors to our resorts on the island, as well as the city’s municipal beach, Ocean Reef Park, and Phil Foster Park. We are moving forward with renovations on the Kennedy Bunker on Peanut Island, which will see many visitors after it opens.
What is on the agenda for the city of Riviera Beach in terms of infrastructure projects, revitalization efforts, or economic expansions?
We moved forward with a development project called Oculina, a 400-unit market-rate condo development that will change the skyline on Broadway. This project will help contribute to the city’s affordable housing fund as part of the Minority Employment and Affordable Housing Opportunity Program. We will get greater densities and intensities, and the city will utilize that money to address workforce housing deficiencies in the community. We partnered with FoundCare, a federally-qualified healthcare facility that put a $15 million facility in our community to serve as a hospital operation. There are two business incubator spaces in the FoundCare facilities, valued at $2.8 million, where we can put small businesses in for the purposes of facilitating small-business growth. We have two projects with a related group in affordable housing that will be 400 units of 20 stories each, that will be market-rate apartments on the waterfront. The other development will be 120 units in eight stories on the marina. These projects create an automatic node of synergy, bringing together 1,500 people on a campus within a stone’s throw from the port.
What are the primary challenges for Riviera Beach, and how is your office working to address these challenges?
The cost of infrastructure is a challenge. We are seeing the cost of goods, commodities, and services increase all over the country. In addition, wages are not keeping pace with housing costs. In 2019, 70% of my employees lived in the city. Now, only 30% live in the city because they relocated to find more affordable housing. We are looking for ways to stabilize housing and infrastructure costs. PPPs are key because if a city is willing to give some concessions, the developer can find a way to make the economics work. If we are willing to have an open mind, we can find a way to make the projects and initiatives work, and to move forward in a responsible manner.
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