For 40 years, the shorthand for Highland Beach was simple. Three miles of private oceanfront between Boca and Delray, no public beach access, one road in and out. That shorthand is now out of date. Two projects at opposite ends of the same 3.3-mile ribbon of A1A finished, started, or moved decisively this year, and together they are redrawing what daily life along South Ocean Boulevard actually looks like.
If you have driven, cycled, or walked the corridor since spring, you already feel it. This is a briefing on what changed, what is still pending, and why the town you woke up in this July is a slightly different place than the one you went to sleep in last summer.
The A1A You Ride Now Is Not the A1A From 2024
The Florida Department of Transportation's SR-A1A Resurfacing, Restoration, and Rehabilitation project was declared substantially complete in early January, more than a year after crews first broke ground just south of Linton Boulevard. Town Manager Marshall Labadie put it plainly to Boca Daily News: for most people in town, the project is done.
What that $8.3 million bought, in concrete terms:
- Milling and full resurfacing of the 3.349-mile corridor from north-end Highland Beach into a small piece of Delray
- Widening in each direction to accommodate a five-foot dedicated bicycle lane, striped in bright green to make the boundary unmistakable
- Modified swales along the west side of the road to improve drainage during rain events, an ongoing concern on a barrier island that floods when heavy rain lines up with high tide
- Refreshed pavement markings and signage, reflective paint, and clearer turn indications
If you ride a bike here, that is the material change. The old A1A asked cyclists to negotiate a narrow shoulder against 40-mph traffic. The new one gives you a dedicated, visually distinct lane the entire length of the town. The Coastal Star noted during construction that the widening required removing landscape hedges and relocating roughly two dozen mature trees, with six too far gone to save. That is the trade you are looking at when you notice the newer, thinner streetscape west of the road.
Two things are still unfinished, and both matter for anyone who uses the corridor daily.
The first is the signal at A1A and Linton. Labadie has acknowledged that when Delray crews replaced a stormwater drain during the project, they had to remove the in-pavement loop detector that used to trigger the light for waiting cars. Until that loop is reinstalled, the signal runs on a fixed timer set by the county rather than on demand, which is why backups have felt worse this season than they should.
The second is a set of pedestrian-activated lighted crosswalk signals, the kind that flash when someone presses a button to cross. State Representative Peggy Gossett-Seidman has requested a state appropriation to fund their installation. If that money does not materialize, Labadie has said the town will look at budgeting the signals itself.
The South End Gets Its First Public Beach Park
The story at the other end of town is bigger, and it is the one every long-term Highland Beach resident has an opinion about.
In mid-April, Palm Beach County filed permit applications and a compliance package with the town for Cam D. Milani Park, the 5.6-acre parcel straddling A1A near the south end that has sat vacant since the county purchased it from the Milani family in 1987 for $3.9 million. Parks and Recreation Director Jennifer Cirillo told The Coastal Star that once permits clear, construction could begin as early as June, with the work taking about 18 months. That puts a ribbon-cutting in the fall of 2027.
The scope of what is actually being built, after the compromise the county announced late last year:
- 5.6 acres total, split by A1A between an inland parking parcel and a beachfront parcel
- 38 general parking spaces in Phase I, phased down from the 100 to 120 originally contemplated
- Bathroom facilities, a lifeguard station, and a gatehouse for a parking attendant on the west side
- Water and sewer connections extended to the parcel
- An $8.6 million construction budget
This is the first piece of public beach access ever established inside Highland Beach's town limits. In a place where every stretch of sand is either condo-owned or single-family private, that is a real shift, not a rhetorical one.
The politics of the park are worth understanding even if you have followed the fight for years. The town has opposed development on traffic and safety grounds and formally asked the county last year to sell the land instead, arguing the parcel could be worth close to $50 million on the open market. In a striking reversal reported by The Palm Beach Post, the Milani family itself now asks the county to abandon or drastically shrink the project, with Cam Milani II writing to commissioners in support of the town's position and Lucia Milani testifying at a public hearing that she has come to agree with residents' concerns. The county says it has no choice. Commissioners have consistently pointed to the 2010 court settlement, which lists 43 conditions the county must meet and, in their reading, obligates them to build.
The construction phase of the long-proposed park straddling State Road A1A at the south end of Highland Beach could begin as early as June, and completion is targeted for fall 2027.
Whatever your view of the outcome, the practical reality is this: by the time snowbirds return for the 2027 to 2028 season, the drive from the north end of town to the Boca Inlet will pass an active construction site, and a year after that, it will pass an operating county park with lifeguards, restrooms, and a marked pedestrian crossing that does not exist there today.
What the Two Ends of the Road Have to Do With Each Other
Read separately, the A1A resurfacing and the Milani Park groundbreaking are two municipal news items. Read together, they describe the same underlying change.
Highland Beach spent 40 years being defined by what was not there. No public beach access, no through-traffic to speak of, no commercial strip beyond a single hotel and a real estate office. The infrastructure matched the identity. Narrow shoulders, a road built for cars going somewhere else, hedges that closed the view.
The version of the corridor that will exist by fall 2027 is different in kind, not just degree. A cyclist can now ride the length of town in a protected lane. A pedestrian will, once the appropriations clear, have signaled crossings that stop traffic on demand. Anyone from West Boca who wants to spend a Saturday at the beach will have a legally parked, county-run place to do it. The town has not become less residential in the ways that matter for the people who own homes here. It has become more porous in the ways visitors experience it.
For homeowners along the corridor, the near-term effects are practical. Cycling traffic on A1A will keep growing now that the lanes exist. The stretch near Linton will continue to feel congested until the loop detector is reinstalled. The southernmost few blocks, closest to the Milani parcel, will live with active construction into 2027. The town's own FY 2026 Strategic Priorities Plan reads like a document written by an administration preparing for a busier road, not a quieter one, with parallel investments in the Marine Unit on the Intracoastal, a Real Time Operations Center at the police department, and a beach restoration feasibility study.
The Anchors That Did Not Change
Not everything on the island shifted this year, and the constants are worth naming because they are where residents actually spend their time.
The Highland Beach Library at 3618 South Ocean Boulevard remains the closest thing the town has to a town square. It moved to its current site in February 2006 after starting life as two shelves of books at Town Hall, and its Community Room has hosted enough FDOT public meetings during the A1A project that regulars there know the engineers by name. Cultural programming continues through the summer, and the library's Community Room is the venue where most Town Commission meetings and public forums happen.
Highland Beach Fire Rescue just passed its first year of independent operation, having separated from Delray Beach's department in 2024 as the first new fire department Palm Beach County had seen in 30 years. The initial year of data suggests the department has matched, and in some measures exceeded, expectations. The ongoing financial dispute with Delray over the split is unresolved, but the service on the ground is now unambiguously local.
Both are quiet institutions doing exactly what they did last summer. In a year when the road itself is being reshaped and a park is coming out of a four-decade legal fight, that continuity is part of the story.
Living Along the New Corridor
The 2026 version of Highland Beach is not a different town. It is the same three-mile barrier island, with the same enclave feel between the Intracoastal and the Atlantic, and the same neighborhood character that has always made it distinct from the busier stretches to the north and south. What changed is the infrastructure of daily movement. How you bike, where you cross, where visitors will park by 2027.
If you have been thinking about whether the changes on A1A will affect what your home is worth, or how the Milani Park timeline might shape a decision to sell before or after construction wraps, that is a conversation worth having with someone who follows the corridor day to day. Book an appointment with Lemore Zausner and we can walk through it together.
