If you've driven Ocean Boulevard between Linton and Spanish River lately, you already know the barrels are gone. What's less obvious is that the three-mile ribbon of A1A that defines this town has quietly become a different road than the one you were using in early 2025, and that the changes still coming down the pipeline will rewrite the south end of Highland Beach in ways that the town has spent forty years trying to prevent.
For a place that markets itself on the private, low-traffic feel of a barrier island between Boca and Delray, the collection of projects lining up along A1A this year is worth reading as one story rather than five unrelated ones.
The road itself is essentially done
After more than a year of construction, the project to upgrade Ocean Boulevard is "substantially complete," with only a few minor punch-list items remaining as work wraps up, Highland Beach Town Manager Marshall Labadie said in January. If you were bracing for another full season of lane closures, you can stop.
What the state actually built for its money is easy to overlook at 35 miles an hour:
- A $8.3 million FDOT project that milled and resurfaced the roadway, widened it in each direction to provide five-foot bicycle lanes, modified swales to improve drainage, and upgraded signage and pavement markings to current standards.
- Bright green markings signifying the bike lanes, reflective paint, and clear indications of where turns are permitted.
- Swale grading intended to address the flooding that residents have complained about for years, particularly the standing water near the Linton intersection during heavy rain.
For cyclists coming down from Delray, this is the first time A1A through Highland Beach has offered a continuous, marked lane rather than a shoulder that disappeared and reappeared at random. That will change traffic behavior on weekends, and it changes the calculation for anyone whose condo faces the road.
The one light that still doesn't work right
If you commute out of town in the morning, you already know the problem. The signal at A1A and Linton is timing badly, and the backups have been worst during the seasonal surge.
The traffic light at A1A and Linton Boulevard has had mis-timed signals causing backups, especially in recent weeks with the influx of seasonal visitors. This is due to the removal of the "loop," which is an electrical connection built into the roadway that detects the presence of vehicles and triggers the traffic light to change.
"They still have to put together the electrical loop for car activation of signals that was removed during the stormwater piece that they did," Labadie said. "Right now, it's not on a demand basis, it's just based on timing set by the county."
Translation: the light is running on a stopwatch, not on whether anyone is actually waiting at it. That is why you sit through a green cycle with no cross traffic at 7:15 a.m. Fixing it requires FDOT and the county to reinstall the sensor loop that got pulled during the Delray stormwater work upstream.
The other unfinished piece is the pedestrian crosswalks. The only remaining piece of the envisioned upgrade project is the installation of lighted crosswalk signals that can be activated by pedestrians waiting to cross, and state Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman has requested an appropriation from the state to fund their installation in the next legislative session. If the appropriation doesn't survive the state budget process, the town will look at funding them locally.
What is coming to the south end
Here is the part of the year that will actually change the character of A1A, and it isn't the repaving.
Palm Beach County filed permit applications and a massive compliance package with the town of Highland Beach in mid-April, and once the permits are approved, 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. The town's own FY 2026 strategic plan lists Phase I consisting of 38 general parking spaces, with construction planned for Summer 2026.
The scale worth internalizing:
- The construction of Milani Park has an estimated price tag of $8.6 million and would end more than 30 years of uncertainty that began when the county purchased the property from the Milani family in 1987 for $3.9 million.
- The 2010 settlement agreement listed 43 points, including that the county ensures a lifeguard was on the beach portion of the 5.6-acre park and that bathroom facilities were available.
- Construction, according to Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation Director Jennifer Cirillo, could take about 18 months, meaning work on the park could be completed by fall 2027.
The context that gets lost in the parking-space arguments: beaches in Highland Beach are all private and there is no public beach access. Once Milani opens, the town's south end will hold the first publicly accessible stretch of sand between the Boca Inlet and the Delray public beach. Whatever you think of that shift, plan for the traffic pattern it implies on A1A south of Bel Air Drive.
There is one wrinkle that hasn't gone away. Highland Beach residents have not given up the fight to block the county from building Milani Park, and they now have a new ally in the Milani family, which for years had been the driving force behind the county building the park. "We want to let the county know that we support the position of the Town as it relates to the Park," said Cam Milani II in a recent letter to county officials, adding that he wants the county to abandon the project altogether or significantly reduce the number of parking spaces. The county's position, as stated by Commissioner Marci Woodward, is that the project is moving forward regardless.
The parcel south of Toscana
If you drive south past Toscana and wonder what happened to the mangroves, you are not imagining it.
Town staff met with the property owner, who provided approved permits from the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorizing the clearing and filling of 0.808 acres, approximately 300 feet by 137 feet, of mangroves in connection with a proposed nine-unit townhome development.
Two things worth knowing:
- As of the January notice from the town, the property owner had not submitted plans to the Town or Planning Board for the proposed development or for the proposed seawall construction and the placement of fill, but they intend on following all Town development procedures and regulations while proceeding with additional mangrove clearing.
- Florida law dictates that the State preempts local governments from requiring permits or taking actions that interfere with mangrove trimming and clearing activities that are authorized at the state and federal level.
That preemption is the mechanism worth understanding. A resident looking at the cleared lot and expecting the town to have refused a permit is looking at the wrong regulator. The state signed off. The town's leverage begins later, when seawall, fill, and vertical construction come in for review.
A department that turned two this spring
Easy to forget in the middle of the road-and-park news: Highland Beach Fire Rescue has now been operating on its own for two full years.
Highland Beach Fire Rescue launched operations in May 2024 as the first new municipal fire department in Palm Beach County since Tequesta's in 1993, with promises to provide improved services at a significantly reduced cost. For more than three decades, Highland Beach received fire rescue service from neighboring Delray Beach; however, as annual costs climbed above the $5 million mark, town leaders began wondering if they could do better on their own.
The department is run by Chief Glenn Joseph, who had been a chief in Boynton Beach and a deputy chief in Boca Raton before taking the Highland Beach role. Station 116 sits at 3612 South Ocean Boulevard, one address south of Town Hall. If you have owned here through the transition, the practical read is that response now originates inside the town line rather than coming south from Delray.
Read together, not separately
Any one of these updates on its own is easy to file and forget. Taken together, they describe a town whose defining road is being physically reshaped, whose south end is about to gain its first public beach access, whose last stand of mangroves along A1A is on the way to becoming townhomes, and whose emergency services have been repatriated inside the town's borders. That is a lot of change to absorb in a place that measures a mile square.
For owners, the effect on daily life is mostly incremental. For anyone whose unit faces A1A, whose community sits near the south end, or whose commute funnels through the Linton signal, the effect is specific enough to be worth watching. The people who paid the most attention to the FDOT construction schedule last year are the same people who should be paying attention to the Milani permit calendar this year.
If you own along A1A and want to talk through what these projects mean for your specific building, block, or plans, I'm always glad to take the call. Reach out to Michelle Yales and schedule a free consultation.
