A1A Just Went Quiet in Highland Beach. It Won't Stay That Way for Long.

For the first time in nearly two years, you can drive the length of Highland Beach without hitting a barrel, a flagger, or a "road work ahead" sign. Town Manager Marshall Labadie told Boca Daily News in January that the $8.3 million project to resurface and widen A1A is "substantially complete," with the barrels gone and only a short punch list left to close out. That is true, and it is also not the whole story. The corridor that just went quiet is about to host a second, unrelated construction project on its south end, and the one piece of the road work that residents actually feel every day, whether they can cross the street safely, still isn't finished.

Highland Beach's relationship with its own three miles of A1A has always come down to the same constraint: too little room to stop, cross, or park along the only road that runs through town. The last two years of construction didn't solve that. They just moved the argument around.

What "Substantially Complete" Leaves Out

The project itself did what it set out to do. FDOT milled and resurfaced the roadway, widened it in both directions to add five-foot bicycle lanes, reworked the swales for better drainage, and repainted the corridor with the bright green lane markings and reflective striping you now see from Linton Boulevard south. When the project broke ground in 2024, the Coastal Star put the price tag at $8.8 million. By the time officials called it substantially done in January 2026, the figure Boca Daily News reported was $8.3 million, a modest difference that suggests the county trimmed scope somewhere along the way rather than a budget blowing out, which is the more common story on projects like this.

What didn't get finished is the part residents notice most. Labadie was candid about it: the only remaining piece is the installation of lighted, pedestrian-activated crosswalk signals, and that depends on the state legislature. As of January, State Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman had requested an appropriation for them, but Labadie's own words left the timeline open: "If it doesn't go anywhere with the state, we will proceed to see if we can have those budgeted this year." Seven months later, the town hasn't posted anything publicly confirming the funding came through, which means nobody outside town hall currently knows when a resident walking to the beach or to Latitudes for dinner will get a signal that actually stops traffic for them.

There's a second wrinkle that has nothing to do with the new signals and everything to do with the old ones. The town's own website currently carries a notice that the crosswalk light signals at 3310 South Ocean Boulevard are out of service. So the corridor isn't just waiting on new infrastructure. An existing crossing point isn't working right now, in the same month this piece is being written.

There's also a quieter problem at the Linton Boulevard intersection, the one everybody who drives north out of town uses. The stormwater work required removing the electrical loop that used to detect waiting cars and trigger the light on demand. Until that loop is rebuilt, the signal runs on fixed timing set by the county instead of responding to actual traffic, which is exactly why backups got noticeably worse there this past winter as seasonal residents returned to town. Nothing in the town's public updates suggests that loop has been rebuilt since.

Two Projects, One Half Mile

While A1A's contractors were wrapping up punch-list items at the north end of town, Palm Beach County was filing permits for a different project at the south end, on the same road. In mid-April 2026, the county submitted permit applications and a compliance package to the town for Milani Park, the long-delayed public beach park that straddles A1A near the town's southern boundary. County Parks and Recreation Director Jennifer Cirillo told the Coastal Star at the time that construction could begin as early as June, with the work taking about 18 months and wrapping around fall 2027 if that timeline holds.

That puts the two projects close enough in time that the corridor may never get a clean break. The resurfacing project's last unresolved piece, the crosswalk signals, still has no confirmed funding or install date. If Milani Park breaks ground anywhere near the county's June estimate, which would already have passed by the time this is published, residents could see construction equipment back on this stretch of A1A before the north end's punch list is even closed.

Neither timeline is locked. Milani Park has been delayed for decades already, and "as early as June" is the optimistic end of the county's own estimate. But if it holds anywhere close to schedule, residents who just got their smooth pavement back should expect a new round of equipment and lane management at the south end before the year is out.

A Town With No Public Beach, About to Get Its First

Here's the fact that makes Milani Park more than another road disruption: Highland Beach has never had public beach access. Not for one block, not for one afternoon. The Coastal Star's own description of the site is blunt about it: beaches in town are all private, and there is no public access point anywhere on the island. The town calls itself "Three Miles of Paradise" in its own newsletters, and it has been ranked among the top places to retire in the country, but none of those three miles has ever been open to anyone who doesn't already have a key.

That's what the county has been trying to change since 1987, when it bought the 5.6 acres from Lucia Milani for $3.9 million, with the condition that it become a park named for her late husband, Cam D. Milani. The Town Commission fought it through three rounds of litigation over nearly four decades. A 2010 settlement finally set terms, but gave the county the option to delay construction twice more, first to 2020, then potentially to 2025 or 2030. The county chose to move now.

Part of what's coming is a genuinely nice thing to have close to home. The park property includes Yamato Rock, a spot locals already treat as one of the better snorkeling access points on this stretch of coast, named for the early 20th century Yamato farming colony that once worked land near what's now Boca Raton and Delray Beach.

The Parking Fight That Shrank

The other reason this project dragged for decades is parking, and the numbers tell you how much ground both sides gave up to get here. The original 2010 settlement authorized up to 100 spaces on the park's west parcel. In 2024, the Town Commission passed a resolution asking the county to sell the property outright instead and put the proceeds toward other county needs, after the county signaled it intended to move forward with something closer to a full build, potentially as many as 120 spaces by the town's own account.

The county didn't sell. But what actually landed in the town's own 2025-2026 Strategic Priorities Plan is a Phase 1 build of just 38 general parking spaces, a fraction of what either side was originally arguing about. That's not a footnote. It's the clearest evidence in this whole saga that both sides compromised toward something smaller and slower than what either originally wanted, which is generally how these fights end in a town this size.

The Rhythm Around the Road Work

None of this happens in a vacuum. Highland Beach's civic calendar already works around the same parking scarcity that's shaping the Milani Park debate. The town's annual Mingle & Jingle holiday gathering at St. Lucy Catholic Church, which drew more than 1,500 residents to its 75th anniversary celebration, runs entirely on trolley shuttles along the west side of A1A because there simply isn't public parking to support an event that size on the road itself. If you're planning to attend this December, expect the same setup: no driving to the church, just a pickup point along A1A.

Mark your calendar for a few other dates while you're at it:

• October 23, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.: The town's Homecoming event returns to St. Lucy Catholic Church, with new food trucks joining the lineup this year.
• Fall 2027: The county's own estimate for when Milani Park construction wraps, if it broke ground on anything close to schedule this summer.

And if you want dinner with an ocean view without leaving town in the meantime, Latitudes at Delray Sands Resort remains the one sit-down restaurant actually inside Highland Beach limits, open daily from breakfast through dinner with a terrace that looks straight out at the water Milani Park will eventually make public.

The Through Line

Every one of these stories, the unfinished crosswalk signals, the overlapping construction windows, the parking count that shrank from 100 to 38, the trolley system built around a holiday party, comes back to the same unresolved math. A1A is Highland Beach's only road, its only sidewalk corridor, and until Milani Park opens, its only shot at public beach access. Every project that touches it has to solve for the same scarcity, and none of them have solved it completely yet. The road just got quieter. Watch what happens the next time it doesn't.

If you're weighing a move to a stretch of coast where the infrastructure story is this specific, Tanya Ajay can walk you through what's actually happening on the ground in Highland Beach and the rest of the Palm Beaches. Schedule a Private Consultation to talk through it.