The Summer A1A Reopened: A Highland Beach Resident's Guide to the Barrier Island's New Rhythm

For more than a year, the through-line of daily life here was orange barrels. You planned errands around them. You gave up left turns you used to take without thinking. Then, sometime in early January, they were gone.

What the barrels left behind is a version of Highland Beach that a lot of us have not lived in before, and the changes are still settling. A repaved corridor, a set of bike lanes that did not exist in 2023, a traffic signal that still is not quite right, and, at the south end of town, a five-and-a-half-acre parcel that spent thirty-six years as an argument and is about to become a construction site.

This is not a market post. It is a note on what the summer actually looks like from the inside of the barrier island, and where the small rituals that make the town feel like itself are shifting.

What actually changed on the pavement

After more than a year of construction, the project to upgrade Ocean Boulevard, A1A, in Highland Beach is "substantially complete," with only a few minor punch-list items remaining as work wraps up, officials said in early January. Town Manager Marshall Labadie described the last phase as touch-ups and small fixes, sprinklers, pathway elevations, the kind of work you only notice if it is done badly.

The scope is worth remembering, because the finished road is not just a repave. The $8.8 million, 3.3-mile project added a 5-foot-wide bicycle lane on each side of the road, required periodic lane closures during construction, and involved widening mainly on the west side of South Ocean Boulevard, which resulted in the removal of landscaping and the relocating of two dozen trees.

Two things are different now that were not different before:

• A continuous, marked bike lane runs the length of town in both directions, which means for the first time you can ride from the Linton bridge to the south end of Highland Beach without having to negotiate a shoulder that was never designed for a bicycle.
• The left-turn lane onto the Linton Boulevard bridge, which used to hold about three cars at roughly 75 feet, has been extended to about 275 feet, so it now accommodates roughly eleven cars, meaning northbound traffic gets blocked less often.

If you drive A1A into Delray in the late afternoon, you have already felt the second change. The queue that used to spill into the through lane at Linton no longer does, most of the time.

The signal at Linton, and the crosswalks that are still coming

The project is not entirely finished. The lingering issue for motorists has been the traffic light at A1A and Linton Boulevard, where mis-timed signals have caused backups, particularly during recent weeks with the influx of seasonal visitors, because the "loop," an electrical connection built into the roadway that detects the presence of vehicles and triggers the light to change, was removed during the stormwater work and still has to be reinstalled.

Translation for the people who sit at that light every morning: the sensor that tells the signal a car is waiting is not back in the pavement yet. Until it is, the light is running on a fixed cycle that does not know you are there.

The other unfinished piece is more consequential for anyone who walks or bikes the corridor. The one remaining element of the envisioned upgrade is the installation of lighted crosswalk signals that pedestrians can activate while waiting to cross, and state Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman has requested a state appropriation to fund them in the next legislative session, though what makes it into the final state budget is always uncertain; if the state does not fund them, the town will look at budgeting for them this year.

For a barrier island town whose residents cross A1A to reach the beach, this is the detail worth watching. The bike lanes are done. The safe way to get across them to the sand is not, yet.

The south end is about to become a construction site

The other summer 2026 story is happening at the town's southern edge, on a piece of land most residents have driven past for years without thinking about.

Milani Park is governed by a settlement agreement that stipulates the design of the park and the timing of construction, the county has one more five-year extension available, and 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.

The park itself has a long backstory that is worth knowing if you want to understand why the shovels finally hitting the ground this summer feels like the end of something. The story began roughly fifty years ago, when Cam D. Milani purchased just over five acres in Highland Beach with the intent to develop 130 multi-family units, faced strong opposition from the Town Commission that led to years of legal disputes, and after a settlement to allow 65 units never came to fruition, Lucia Milani eventually sold the property to Palm Beach County for $3.9 million on the condition that it become a park named after her husband, who had passed away the year prior.

What is being built is a nature park, not a beach club. Along the boardwalk at Milani Park, which will pass over native Florida vegetation that has been allowed to flourish, there will be educational signs about the native habitat as well as the history of the property, which is believed to have been a Native American burial ground, and it is going to be more of a nature preservation park.

The design goes further than signage. Palm Beach County's Art in Public Places program has issued a call for artists to design art imagery integrated into the Accoya wood boardwalk railing panels and seat tops at Milani Park, with imagery inspired by the local coastal ecology and the historical and cultural heritage of the site.

Two practical implications for people who live here:

The first is that if final plans include beach access, Milani Park will offer the only public beach access in Highland Beach. That is a real change to how the barrier island functions, and it is why the debate has been what it has been.

The second is that the residents nearest the site have never been opposed to the nature-park concept. Nearby residents say they can live with the nature-preservation concept, especially since earlier plans for the project included more than 100 parking spots on the west side of A1A, but the sticking point remains the beach portion, according to Ron Reame, vice president of the board of the Boca Highland Beach Club & Marina, which is adjacent to the property on the west side, who noted that the beach is not very wide during high tide and includes the Yamato Rock formation, which can be hidden and hazardous to those not familiar with it.

If you swim off the south end, the Yamato Rock point is worth reading up on before Milani Park introduces new visitors to it.

One restaurant, one library, and why that matters more now

Highland Beach has never pretended to be a dining town. That is part of why people move here. It also means the handful of anchors the town does have carry more weight than they would in a place with alternatives.

Latitudes at Delray Sands Resort, at 2809 South Ocean Boulevard, is the practical answer to the question of where a resident goes on a Tuesday when nobody wants to drive north. The restaurant runs breakfast through dinner daily, and it took the 2024 Readers' Choice Winner nod from Boca Raton Observer for Best Waterfront Dining Spot, with a 2025 finalist finish in the same category. If you have not been in a while, the space is organized as several distinct rooms rather than one dining room, including an outdoor Ocean Terrace, a Chef's Seafood Bar, and the Wave Pool Bar, which changes which room you should ask for depending on the hour.

Breakfast is the underused window. Seven to ten-thirty in the morning, on the terrace, before the wind picks up, is a version of the town most people who work through the season never experience.

The other anchor is the library. The Highland Beach Library originated in the mid-1970s as two shelves of books in Town Hall, evolved into a full library, and in February 2006 moved to its present site at 3614 South Ocean Boulevard. Cultural programming runs year-round. During the summer, when the Palm Beach County system leans into the reading challenge, it is the closest thing the town has to a shared civic living room.

A weeknight, reordered

Put the pieces together and the shape of a Highland Beach summer week has quietly shifted.

The A1A ride is now a real option. A slow loop from the north end of town down to where the road narrows near Milani Park and back is roughly seven miles of continuous marked lane, ocean on one side, intracoastal peeking through on the other. Do it at seven in the morning before the sun turns aggressive, or at six in the evening once the pavement has cooled. Watch the Linton signal on the way back until the loop detector is reinstalled, because the light does not know you are there.

Dinner at Latitudes is the easiest walk-in of the season, since the winter regulars have gone north. If you have friends visiting who want the restaurant view without the winter reservation math, this is the window. The library calendar is worth checking on a Thursday. And the south end, for the next several months, is going to be loud during working hours as Phase I of the park breaks ground. If your evening walk usually takes you past the site, expect fencing, staging, and the beginning of a boardwalk you will eventually walk on.

None of this is the version of Highland Beach the brochures sold. It is quieter and more particular, and it rewards the people who already know where to look.

If you are thinking about how a change like Milani Park or the new corridor affects the value of what you already own here, or you are considering a Highland Beach purchase and want a candid read on the streets and buildings that are shifting with it, Kelly Gerber is available for a private conversation. Let's Connect.