Highland Beach This Summer: A Repaved A1A, a Groundbreaking at the South End, and a Nesting Season Under New Rules

For nearly forty years, the story of Highland Beach was what did not happen here. No traffic light. No public beach access. No park on the parcel at the south end. The town's civic identity was, in effect, a series of resolutions to keep things the way they were.

That posture broke this year. Three things residents fought over, waited on, or simply lived with are suddenly moving at once, and the summer of 2026 is when the shifts become visible from your car window, your balcony, and your evening walk.

The A1A you drove last spring is not the A1A you drive now

The Florida Department of Transportation's resurfacing project on State Road A1A ran for more than a year and closed out this January. Town Manager Marshall Labadie told Boca Daily News in early January that the project was "substantially complete," with barrels removed and the bike lane conflicts with turn lanes marked, and that the completed upgrade of A1A in Highland Beach consisted of widening, repavement, and the installation of bike lanes.

The scale is worth holding onto. The $8.3 million project, funded by the state Department of Transportation, consisted of milling and resurfacing the existing roadway, widening the roadway in each direction to provide five-foot bicycle lanes, modifying swales to improve drainage, and upgrading signage and pavement markings to meet current standards. If you live here, that means several things you'll notice this month:

• A dedicated bike lane on both sides of A1A across all 3.3 miles of the corridor, marked with bright green paint.
• Redrawn swales that should hold up better against the rain-and-high-tide combinations that used to leave standing water near Linton.
• A dramatically longer left-turn lane at A1A and Linton Boulevard. The project more than tripled the length of the left-turn lane for cars heading over the bridge from 75 feet to 275 feet, expanding from about three cars to roughly eleven cars, meaning that cars will block northbound traffic less often.

One caveat if you commute at the top of the hour. The traffic light at A1A and Linton has had mis-timed signals causing backups, especially with the influx of seasonal visitors, because the "loop" electrical connection built into the roadway that detects vehicles and triggers the light was removed during the stormwater work. That vehicle-detection loop is on the punch list. Until it is back in, the signal is running on a fixed timer, which is why a light rain can still produce a queue that feels out of proportion to the traffic behind you.

The parcel at the south end finally has a shovel in it

The 5.6 acres straddling A1A just north of Spanish River Boulevard have been an argument since 1987. This summer they become a construction site.

The turning point came last fall. In September 2025, County Commissioner Marci Woodward and County Administrator Joe Abruzzo met with Highland Beach Mayor Natasha Moore and Town Manager Marshall Labadie and came up with a plan to address one of the most contentious concerns: too many parking spaces on the park's west side. While the 2010 settlement agreement requires 100 parking spots on that side of A1A, county and town leaders agreed to install just 46 spaces in the park's first phase of construction, with the remaining 54 to be part of a second phase left up in the air to a time to be determined by the county.

The town's own FY26 Strategic Priorities Plan puts a finer point on the timing. The county is moving forward with project construction and has agreed to phase in parking, with Phase I consisting of 38 general parking spaces, and construction planned for Summer 2026. Woodward said plans are for the heaviest of the construction to be in the summer when fewer residents are in town, and that the current plans help preserve the east side of the park's historical and archeological significance. Palm Beach County reports the overall build will take roughly 24 months and must meet 43 conditions the county must follow, such as the architecture or environment, as part of the settlement agreement, with development of the project taking 24 months.

One footnote to the compromise, because it explains the mood at recent Town Hall meetings: the Milani family, which spent three decades pushing the county to honor its 1987 promise, has changed positions. In a recent letter to county officials, Cam Milani II wrote that the family wants to let the county know it supports the position of the Town as it relates to the Park, asking the county to abandon the project altogether, or, if that is not possible, significantly reduce the number of parking spaces. Palm Beach County's answer, in effect, was that its hands were tied. Commissioners said they must abide by a 2010 court settlement that requires the park to be built, and that the county must meet certain construction deadlines or else it could lose title to the park.

For residents of the Boca Highland Beach Club & Marina immediately to the west, the practical impact this summer is truck traffic, staging, and a slow reveal of a park design that is meant to read less like a beach destination and more like a preserve. Woodward has described the east side as "going to be more of a nature preservation park."

The beach itself is under new rules

Sea turtle nesting on Florida's Atlantic coast is a familiar summer story. What is easy to forget is how disproportionately it is a Highland Beach story. The town's own page states it plainly: Highland Beach has more annual sea turtle nests than Boca Raton and Delray Beach. A recent Coastal Star review of state records put the volume at more than 1,100 nests recorded last year during nesting season, which runs March 1 through October 31.

Two rule sets shape what a resident actually does with that fact this summer.

The first is the town's revised Sea Turtle Lighting Ordinance, which supersedes the older, broader Ordinance 554. Building Official Jeff Remas told the Coastal Star, when the draft was introduced, that the change was long overdue and that "our existing ordinance is pathetic." The core requirement is unchanged and worth putting on a sticky note if you own an oceanfront unit: turn off all beachfront lighting, dusk to dawn, from March 1 to October 31 (Ordinance Number 554), with the new version giving the town more teeth to enforce it.

The second is the town's new Beach Conditions Program, announced on the municipal homepage this year and designed to help keep residents informed about ocean and beach safety. Combined with the completed A1A drainage work, it is the first summer in a long time when a resident checking one town-run channel can get both the road status and the swim status at the same time.

If your household includes anyone who has become fluent in turtle etiquette but still wants to see a release up close, the closest public-facing program is at Gumbo Limbo in Boca, which runs turtle walks, hatchling release observations, and free outdoor marine feedings. It is a fifteen-minute drive south on the freshly repaved A1A.

Where residents actually go on a Thursday evening

Highland Beach is roughly a mile-and-a-half strip of condominium and single-family life with, by design, one restaurant on the water and a handful of civic anchors. The Palm Beaches tourism board still identifies the town's principal in-town dining as Latitudes, the Delray Sands Resort restaurant known for its oceanfront views. For a summer table with an actual sunset arc over the pool deck rather than a parking lot, it remains the default.

The other in-town anchor is the Highland Beach Library at 3618 S Ocean Boulevard, which runs cultural programming through the summer and is open Monday through Thursday 10 am to 8 pm, Friday 10 am to 4:30 pm, and Saturday 9 am to 1 pm. Thursday evenings tend to be the quietest window if you want to work through the periodicals or catch a talk without the seasonal crowd.

Beyond that, the calculus most residents already run is the same as always: south to Mizner Park and the Boca Raton Museum of Art for a proper evening out, or north to Atlantic Avenue for something less choreographed. What has changed is the ride there. A five-foot lane in each direction on A1A makes a bike commute to Atlantic Dunes Park or up to East Atlantic a legitimate option now, not an act of nerve.

Three things a resident used to plan around here have been rewritten in the same summer: how you move up and down A1A, what stands at the south end of town, and how the beach behaves after dusk. It is worth pausing to notice that.

A short summer-to-fall calendar

What the three changes have in common

None of these shifts were inevitable this summer. The A1A work could have carried through another rainy season, the Milani deal could have collapsed again, and the lighting ordinance could have stayed on the shelf as it had for years. That they are landing together is the story worth telling your out-of-town family this July.

The through-line is that Highland Beach has traded a defensive posture for a maintained one. The road has been rebuilt to a modern standard rather than repaved and re-striped. The south-end parcel is being built to a compromise rather than fought to a standstill. The beach has an ordinance with real teeth rather than a set of gentle recommendations. For a town whose selling point has always been quiet, these are not concessions. They are the infrastructure that keeps the quiet defensible for the next decade.

If you own here, that has practical consequences worth walking through with someone who watches this market street by street. When it is time for a private conversation about how these changes affect your property, or about a discreet sale, The Aaron Buchbinder Group is available for a private consultation.