While many experts predict a pending commercial real estate crash that could devastate the tax base and further threaten bank stability, economist Hugh Kelly said reports of an apocalypse are overrated.

Kelly, a New York University real estate professor who spoke to members of the Economic Forum of Palm Beach County today, said he knows he’s bucking conventional beliefs when he dismisses the most dire predictions.

But, he said, a growing GDP and new jobs he believes are coming this year could soften a crash.

“I think forecasts of a crash are navigating out of a rear-view mirror of a recession that is over,” Kelly said inside the Kravis Center. “Demand for use of commercial space remains weak and absorption is negative, but we’re growing in terms of consumption.”

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John Gillies, the head of the FBI office in Miami, retells one particular tale of public corruption repeatedly these days. He said it shows how public corruption is often right out in the open for everyone to see.

Speaking to the Economic Forum of Palm Beach County on Wednesday, Gillies said he worked a case in California in which an attorney openly bribed judges and juries. The lawyer even took a jury out to lunch. Gillies later asked the opposing attorney in the case why he didn’t go to law enforcement. The chagrined lawyer said, “I didn’t want to look cheap in front of the jurors.”

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Rebel Cook, a real estate broker who runs a local business group, said she’s seeing a thaw in decision-making by business leaders. Now that warehouse rental rates now have fallen below $10 per square foot, companies are once again exploring rental warehouse property in Palm Beach County. Investors with cash are starting to get serious about buying properties. They’ll offer distressed sellers a rock-bottom price and then, if it’s not accepted, move on to the next deal, she said. “This is a new economic cycle, and what that means is that properties or assets change hands. And nobody ever said that every cycle has to be a sellers’ market,” said Cook, president of the Economic Forum, a 250-member group of leaders from the real estate, banking, finance and health care industries in Palm Beach County.

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The Seagate Marina, once a bucolic launching point for small boats, might soon be the site of a $25 million waterfront retreat with a 130-room hotel, expanded barns to store luxury boats and tiki bars and grills.

The location is the marina’s best asset, said North County commercial Realtor Rebel Cook. The nearest indoor large boat storage locations are in Riviera Beach and Stuart. And Jupiter Pointe is a convenient location for boat owners who live on Jupiter Island, she said. “The economy is still down. (Miller) must have strong financial backing if he is going to make it through this recession,” Cook said.

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During the boom, Florida’s Save Our Homes tax break pitted neighbor against neighbor. It was common for identical condos in a building, or similar houses on a block, to receive widely different tax bills depending on when the owner bought.

But during the real estate bust, the value of the Save Our Homes tax break has plummeted.

The break will shelter $14.6 billion in homesteaded property value from taxes this year, down from $29 billion in 2008, Palm Beach County Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits said this month at the Economic Forum of Palm Beach County.

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Palm Beach County Economic Forum President Rebel Cook said she is still “reeling” from news of the alleged scam. She predicts many wealthy Palm Beachers will be forced to cut back on their personal staffs, creating a trickle-down effect of growing unemployment. In the coming weeks, area restaurants, which are already hosting fewer patrons and coping with reduced staffs, will likely receive even less business, and charitable foundations will try to survive with dwindling donations, Cook said. The only South Florida industry that might be spared from the fallout is the legal industry, which will feed off the inevitable slew of lawsuits, Cook said. But even that’s not a sure thing. “Will lawyers do well?” Cook said. “Yes, if their clients can pay them.”

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It’s time that Americans acknowledged the inevitable. The end is not as far off as your pandering politicians would have you believe. The ticking debt clock is nearing detonation. Some say it’s still not too late to keep it from blowing the economy to smithereens. I’m not convinced that wasting the past 20 years wasn’t decisive. But there are those – such as the Concord Coalition’s Harry Zeeve, who spoke to the Economic Forum of Palm Beach County on Thursday – who believe that something still can be done.

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The housing market in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast has turned “brutal” and is getting worse, a veteran mortgage broker said Tuesday. The stark outlook came from William Davis, president of Private Funding Specialists Inc. in Palm Beach Gardens and past president of the Palm Beach County chapter of the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers.

“I’ve seen some tough times, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Davis told members of the Economic Forum of Palm Beach County.

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