Marketing across Palm Beach County

West Palm Beach is the urban core of Palm Beach County and, in recent years, the center of what the Business Development Board calls Wall Street South. Hedge funds, private equity firms and wealth managers are moving downtown, drawing names like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, with Class A towers such as One Flagler and One West Palm. By the board's own count, the county is now home to more than 300 investment and financial services firms. Add companies headquartered in the city, like Affiliated Managers Group, Florida Public Utilities and The Palm Beach Post, plus a regional aerospace cluster with Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky.

Downtown is lived on foot. Clematis Street is the spine for bars, restaurants and nightlife; CityPlace, on Rosemary Avenue, mixes retail, offices and residences; and the GreenMarket took the No. 1 spot among U.S. farmers markets in a USA TODAY 10Best readers' poll. Since 2018 the Brightline station has linked the city to Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Culture carries weight: the Kravis Center and the Norton Museum of Art draw audiences from across the region. Neighborhoods like Northwood Village, NORA, SoSo, El Cid and Flamingo Park each have their own personality. The executive who just relocated from New York, the lifelong local and the seasonal visitor all share the same streets.

Boca Raton is Palm Beach County's headquarters town. According to the city's economic development office, it is home to more than half of the county's corporate headquarters and more than 12 million square feet of Class A office space. Office Depot runs its global headquarters here on a 28-acre campus, alongside The GEO Group and Celsius Holdings. On Yamato Road sits the Boca Raton Innovation Campus, the former IBM complex where the first PC was born, now home to Kroger, Modernizing Medicine, Bluegreen Vacations and D-Wave, which moved its quantum computing headquarters here. The city is also drawing biopharma, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure and private equity.

The other big engine is knowledge and healthcare. Florida Atlantic University, with an 850-acre campus and more than 32,000 students, is the largest employer, followed by Baptist Health Hospital. Downtown revolves around Mizner Park, opened in 1991 with the Boca Raton Museum of Art and its amphitheater, and Sanborn Square. Since December 2022, the Brightline station next to Mizner Park has connected the city to Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Orlando. Out west, Town Center at Boca Raton on Glades Road is anchored by five department stores, including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. The historic Boca Raton Resort, dating to 1926, rounds out the picture. Customers here expect quality, service and a brand that measures up.

Boynton Beach runs at two speeds. On the east side, between Seacrest Boulevard and the Intracoastal, is the downtown the city and its Community Redevelopment Agency have been rebuilding along Ocean Avenue: Town Square, home to City Hall and the library, and Boynton Harbor Marina, half a mile south of the Boynton Inlet, where fishing charters, dive boats, cruises and jet ski rentals push off every morning. Out west, commerce clusters on Congress Avenue south of Gateway Boulevard, where Boynton Beach Mall, Boynton Town Center and Renaissance Commons draw shoppers and diners from the neighborhoods that filled in after the 1960s. Two very different audiences, a short drive apart.

At roughly 80,000 residents, Boynton is the third-largest city in Palm Beach County, and its economy has a clear anchor: Baptist Health's Bethesda Hospital East on South Seacrest Boulevard ranks as the city's largest employer. Among working residents, the biggest sectors are health care and education, retail, professional services, hospitality and, a step behind, finance, insurance and real estate. Daily life moves along I-95, Boynton Beach Boulevard, Woolbright Road and Congress Avenue, and the city has its own Tri-Rail stop, so a lot of people commute in and out toward West Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Broward. If you sell here, you are competing for people who spend real time in the car and make decisions on their phones.

In Delray Beach, nearly everything runs through Atlantic Avenue. Downtown once stretched from Swinton Avenue to the Intracoastal; today it reaches from I-95 to the ocean, powered by restaurants, bars, galleries, shops and hotels that fill the sidewalks at night and on weekends. The Pineapple Grove Arts District sits just north of Atlantic, Old School Square anchors the middle with the Crest Theatre and the Cornell Art Museum, and the avenue hosts art fairs and street festivals throughout the year. The city has three miles of beach along A1A, a municipal marina and a street-legal golf cart culture, which tells you a lot about the pace of daily life here.

Beyond the postcard, the economy has other engines. Major employers include Delray Medical Center, the school district, the city itself, Meisner Electric, Ed Morse Delray Toyota, Schumacher Automotive and Pinecrest Rehabilitation Hospital. Congress Avenue, a corridor of about four miles, is lined with trades, home improvement and light industrial businesses, and the city's economic plan calls for protecting that commercial land while courting wealth management, digital health and creator-economy firms. Out west, gated communities like Kings Point and Villages of Oriole carry a Delray Beach mailing address even though they sit outside city limits. Tri-Rail and Amtrak both stop at Delray Beach station.

Jupiter is the northernmost town in Palm Beach County, and it is organized around the water: the mouth of the Loxahatchee River, the Jupiter Inlet and the Intracoastal. The Jupiter Inlet District, which has maintained the inlet and its channel since 1921, calls it an economic engine that supports a broad range of marine businesses. The Riverwalk, a master-planned public promenade of about two and a half miles, runs along the Intracoastal to the inlet, and just north of the Indiantown Road bridge sits Harbourside Place, with a hotel, offices, shops, an amphitheater, restaurants and public boat docks. The 1860 Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse is the town's symbol and the landmark every local conversation comes back to.

Head west and you find a different Jupiter. Abacoa brings together Florida Atlantic University's John D. MacArthur Campus and Wilkes Honors College, Roger Dean Stadium, spring training home of the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals, and a science cluster that includes the Wertheim UF Scripps Institute and the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. Jupiter Medical Center ranks among the county's major employers, and companies such as Holtec International and G4S Secure Solutions are based in town. Among residents, professional, scientific and technical services is the top industry, followed by health care. This is a well-informed audience that does its homework before it buys.

In Palm Beach Gardens, commercial life has a spine: PGA Boulevard. That's where you'll find The Gardens Mall, open since 1988, PGA Commons, Midtown, Legacy Place and Downtown at the Gardens, the stretch where people shop, eat and do business. The city grew out of John D. MacArthur's plans in the late 1950s, and its identity is tied to golf: twelve courses sit inside city limits, and PGA National Resort hosts the PGA TOUR's Cognizant Classic every winter. Three I-95 interchanges and two on Florida's Turnpike connect it to the rest of the county, and Palm Beach International Airport is about twelve miles south.

Behind the golf is a solid corporate base. The city's 2023 annual financial report lists major employers including the school district, Tenet Healthcare, TBC Corporation, ZimVie Dental & Spine, G4S, HCA Florida Healthcare, Belcan Engineering, Bank of America and the South Florida Water Management District. The city also has aerospace roots, with Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky west of the Beeline Highway, plus Palm Beach State College's Eissey Campus and its theater. More than half of residents hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and it shows in how they buy: they compare, read reviews and expect a professional experience from first click to final invoice.

Wellington is a village, not a city, and with 61,637 residents in 2020 it is the most populous village in Florida. It grew out of the old Flying Cow Ranch as a planned community in the 1970s, and its own financial report describes it as a residential community more than an employment center: plenty of residents work elsewhere and head home along Forest Hill Boulevard, Southern Boulevard or State Road 7. Everyday shopping clusters on the east side near US 441 and State Road 7, home to The Mall at Wellington Green and Old Wellington Mall, and health care is anchored by Wellington Regional Medical Center on Forest Hill Boulevard, open since 1986.

What sets Wellington apart is the horse. The village is known as the winter equestrian capital of the world: from January through April the Winter Equestrian Festival brings riders, horses and teams from dozens of countries, and Wellington International stages more than forty weeks of show jumping, hunter and dressage competition a year. The National Polo Center, formerly International Polo Club Palm Beach, hosts high-goal polo. The county's Business Development Board puts the equestrian event's estimated economic impact at $538 million, with hotels, restaurants and retailers among the direct beneficiaries. For a local business that means two calendars: residents all year, and the season on top.

The heart of Lake Worth Beach is its historic core: the Historic Old Town Commercial District, 59 buildings dating from 1912 to 1949 along Lake Avenue and Lucerne Avenue, where galleries, cafes and bars mix with the Lake Worth Playhouse and the headquarters of the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County. The street is the stage here: the Street Painting Festival covers Lake and Lucerne with chalk artists, the Palm Beach Pride parade comes through town, and Bryant Park hosts the Midnight Sun Festival, a nod to the city's Finnish heritage. Across the Robert A. Harris Bridge sits the municipal beach, with the Casino & Beach Complex, winter bonfire nights and a pier surfers know for its consistent waves.

The economy runs both directions: in 2019 only 6.9% of jobs in the city were held by residents, and many locals commute to West Palm Beach, Boca Raton or Boynton Beach. Working residents lean toward professional and administrative services, construction, health care and education, and hospitality. Palm Beach State College is the largest employer, followed by the city itself, which has run its own electric utility since 1914 and operates a solar farm. The CRA, created in 1989, drives reinvestment along Dixie Highway, 6th Avenue South and 10th Avenue North. It's a diverse city with Finnish roots and a sizable Guatemalan community, about a thousand historic cottages and a distinctly artsy neighborhood feel.

Despite the name, Royal Palm Beach sits about fifteen miles inland. It's a village incorporated in 1959, home to 38,932 people in 2020, that calls itself 'Your Great American Hometown' and takes green space seriously: it has been a Tree City USA since 1990, the entire village is a designated bird sanctuary, and it maintains about 325 acres of parks, with Royal Palm Beach Commons Park and its 19-acre lake as the community's gathering spot. Civic life centers on Royal Palm Beach Boulevard, home to Village Hall, and the original neighborhoods, including the Colony section, the Willows and LaMancha, sit alongside newer subdivisions toward State Road 7.

Commerce is spread across State Road 7, Southern Boulevard and Okeechobee Boulevard, the corridors the village and the surrounding western communities use to get to work and run errands. At State Road 7 and Southern Boulevard, a 43-acre site once known as Tuttle Royale was acquired in 2026 for a mixed-use project with housing, retail, a hotel and offices. Health care has been a fixture since 1986, when Palms West Hospital and Wellington Regional Medical Center opened and medical office complexes followed. Per Data USA, residents work mainly in health care, education and retail, with a median household income of about $96,000.

Greenacres is celebrating its centennial in 2026: it was incorporated on May 24, 1926, on land L. C. Swain began platting in 1923 as a community for working families. His 'Original Section,' half a mile west of Military Trail, is still there, and the founder's name lives on in Swain Boulevard, home to the community center. The city covers about six square miles in the middle of the county, between Palm Springs to the east and Wellington to the west, and it took off in the 1970s as the I-95 expansion brought a wave of new residents. Today it has roughly 44,000 people and John I. Leonard High School, the largest high school in Palm Beach County.

This is a city of services and everyday work. Data USA places most working residents in health care, retail and construction, in office support, sales and management roles. One of its retail hubs is the intersection of Lake Worth Road and Jog Road, where Green Acres Plaza brings together a grocery store, a gym, medical services and quick-service restaurants. The city's Economic Development department works to strengthen those corridors with programs like 'Buy Local. Shop Greenacres,' and publishes its business startup checklist in Spanish as well. It's a diverse city where more than four in ten residents were born outside the United States.

Riviera Beach is the county's front door to the sea. It's home to the Port of Palm Beach, which handles cargo such as granite and cement and runs a cruise terminal, plus a U.S. Coast Guard station and a city marina. Next to the port on Blue Heron Boulevard, Marina Village brings together the Riviera Beach Event Center, Bicentennial Park and the docks, and the city's Community Redevelopment Agency is lining up partners for a second phase with a hotel, waterfront restaurants, retail and offices. From there you have direct access to Peanut Island, the cruise terminal and the beach. Along the Intracoastal, boatyards and marine service shops such as the Viking Yacht Service Center keep the waterfront working.

To the east, Singer Island makes up the city's oceanfront, with its beaches and one of the country's top-rated shore dive sites under the Blue Heron Bridge. On the mainland, Broadway is home to FPL's Riviera Beach Energy Center, a natural gas plant, and Rapids Water Park draws families from across the region. Local history shows, too: in the early 1900s the town was nicknamed 'Conchtown' for its residents of Bahamian descent, and today it is a predominantly African American community. Residents work mostly in health care and retail, with transportation and warehousing in third place, a direct reflection of the port economy.

Florida's Palm Springs was born in 1957 on the pastures of William A. Boutwell's dairy, which at its peak ran more than a thousand Guernsey cows near Congress Avenue and Forest Hill Boulevard; Boutwell is credited with inventing half-and-half. Today it's a compact village in east-central Palm Beach County, between Greenacres, Lake Worth Beach and West Palm Beach, that has grown through annexation since 1998 to more than double its land area. From 2010 to 2020 it was the fastest-growing municipality in the county, reaching 26,890 residents. It was also the first municipality in the county with a Hispanic majority, and today 52% of its residents were born in another country, per Data USA.

The local economy is built around two commercial subdistricts that the village's CRA prioritizes. The 291-acre Congress Avenue subdistrict includes the Fulton-Holland Educational Services Center, headquarters of the county school district, cosmetics manufacturer Oxygen Development, the Defy trampoline park, an Off-Lease Only dealership and the YMCA of the Palm Beaches. The 221-acre Lake Worth Road subdistrict has a Home Depot and the long-running Lake Worth Swap Shop and Drive-In. Only 8.5% of residents work inside the village; most head to West Palm Beach and neighboring cities, though more than half work within ten miles of home. Construction, support services and retail employ the most residents.