Ask a longtime Highland Beach resident about Milani Park and you'll usually get a sigh before you get an answer. Ask when it's actually opening and the sigh gets longer. The parcel straddling A1A near the town's south end has been the subject of lawsuits, settlement agreements, and public comment periods since before most of the condo towers along South Ocean Boulevard were built. So here's the question worth asking this month, as the county's own construction timeline targets a start date: after roughly four decades of arguing over what this land would become, what is actually going into the ground?
Based on the most recent county records, the answer is smaller and quieter than either side of that argument ever described. That shift matters more than the fact that construction is finally happening, especially if you live within walking distance of Yamato Rock or use A1A to get anywhere at all.
Fifty Years, Compressed
The short version starts with Cam D. Milani, a developer who purchased just over five acres of this land about fifty years ago intending to build 130 multi-family units. The Town Commission fought him. Years of litigation followed, ending in a settlement that would have allowed 65 units, a project that also never got built. With the land sitting unused and another developer deal falling through, Milani's widow, Lucia Milani, sold the parcel to Palm Beach County in 1987 for $3.9 million, on the condition that it become a public park named for her late husband.
That should have been the end of it. It wasn't. The Town of Highland Beach opposed turning the land into a public park too, citing concerns about traffic and crime that a public beach access point would bring to a town that has none. A 2010 settlement agreement stated the park would not be built before 2020, with the county holding options to push construction to 2025 or 2030 instead. In 2019, county commissioners voted 4-3 to use one of those extensions, kicking the start date to 2025. By February 2025, the county was ready to move again, releasing an approved site plan for a park with space for 100 cars and an estimated 24-month build.
That's the version most residents have been picturing for the better part of a decade: a real beach park, a real parking lot, a real change to the character of that stretch of A1A.
What's Actually Under Contract Now
It isn't what's coming. County planning documents from 2026 describe a parcel of roughly 5.3 to 5.6 acres (the exact figure shifts slightly depending on which document you read) developed as a passive nature park, closer in spirit to Ocean Ridge's Hammock Park ten miles north than to a conventional beach recreation area. An elevated boardwalk will run over native vegetation that's been left to grow for decades. A guard house, a restroom and lifeguard building, and landscaping round out the plan. There is no mention of active recreation facilities in any of the county's current design documents.
The parking count tells the real story. The Town of Highland Beach's own Strategic Priorities Plan describes Phase I as 38 general parking spaces. Reporting from The Coastal Star, which has covered this project for years, put the number the county agreed to "late last year" at 46 spaces, phased in specifically to avoid the 100-plus spaces once on the table. Whether it lands at 38 or 46, that's roughly a third to under half of what residents spent years fighting to prevent.
| What residents fought for years | What's under contract now | |
|---|---|---|
| Parking | 100 to 120 spaces | 38 to 46 spaces (Phase I) |
| Design | Active beach recreation park | Passive nature preserve, elevated boardwalk |
| Beach access | Full beachfront access point | Access managed around Yamato Rock, a natural outcropping flagged as a hazard at high tide |
| Estimated cost | Not specified in early plans | $7 million to $8.6 million, depending on source |
That last row matters too. The county's own construction manager bid, the document that sets the current timeline, lists a preliminary construction cost of $7 million. Earlier county estimates reported by The Coastal Star put the figure at $8.6 million. Neither number is enormous by South Florida infrastructure standards, but the gap between the two, filed within the same year, gives a sense of how much this project's scope has been negotiated down even in its final stretch.
The Yamato Rock detail is worth sitting with if you've never walked that stretch of beach. Ron Reame, vice president of the board at the Boca Highland Beach Club and Marina next door, has pointed out for years that the beach there narrows sharply at high tide and includes a rock formation that isn't always visible to people who don't already know it's there. That concern, more than parking or traffic, is why the beach portion of the park stayed the smallest and most contested piece of the whole design.
Why the Start Date Keeps Moving
If you've heard "construction is finally starting" about this project before, you're not imagining it. The timeline has slipped repeatedly, and the pattern is part of why residents have learned to treat each announcement with some skepticism.
- 2010: Settlement sets earliest possible start at 2020, with two five-year extension options built in.
- 2019: County commissioners vote 4-3 to exercise the first extension, pushing the timeline to 2025.
- February 2025: County releases an approved site plan, with construction estimated to take 24 months once it begins.
- April 2026: The county files permit applications with the town. Officials say construction could start as early as June 2026, with an 18-month build pointing to completion by fall 2027.
- 2026 county bid solicitation: The construction manager contract the county is now working from targets a start this month, September 2026, with completion by September 2027.
Notice that even the two most recent estimates, both from 2026, don't agree on a start month. That's not a knock on any single office. It reflects a project that has been renegotiated, re-permitted, and re-scoped enough times that "soon" has meant something different every year since 2010. If crews haven't broken ground on your walk past the site yet, that's consistent with how this project has always moved.
The Same Road Is Getting a Quieter Fix Too
Milani Park isn't the only thing changing on A1A this year, and the second story explains something about the first.
The Florida Department of Transportation spent much of 2024 and 2025 on an $8.3 million resurfacing project along a 3.3-mile stretch of A1A running from just south of Linton Boulevard through Highland Beach and into a small section of Delray Beach. The work widened the road for five-foot bike lanes in each direction, modified drainage swales, and updated pavement markings. Weather pushed the original end-of-May 2025 completion target back to the end of August to absorb what the town described as thirty rain days. By January 2026, Boca Daily News reported the project was substantially complete, with Town Manager Marshall Labadie noting that for most residents, the work was essentially done aside from a handful of punch-list items, including a traffic signal at A1A and Linton that lost its vehicle-sensing loop during related stormwater work and now runs on fixed timing instead.
One item stayed unfinished: lighted, pedestrian-activated crosswalk signals, which depended on state funding that wasn't guaranteed to come through.
Then, within the past month, the town approved a new fix. Highland Beach signed a $283,920 agreement with Lux Solar Inc. to install in-ground LED lighting at all eight mid-block pedestrian crosswalks along A1A, part of a broader $375,000 state-funded safety project. The town's own funding request is direct about why this second project exists: elevation and drainage changes from the recent FDOT resurfacing have caused flooding and, in places, forced pedestrians into the travel lane. The same project will also repave and regrade the adjacent shared-use path to correct that.
Read together, the two A1A stories and the Milani Park story are the same story. A resurfacing meant to fix the road created a walking hazard that now needs its own separate project to correct. A park meant to give Highland Beach its first public beach access is arriving as a fraction of what either side once argued over. Nothing on this road has landed as originally announced in years. What actually shows up tends to be smaller, later, and more heavily negotiated than what got proposed.
If you live here, that's the useful thing to know before you read the next town newsletter or drive past a new set of orange cones this fall. The headline will say something is "finally happening." The details, if you look for them, usually say it's happening at about a third of the scale anyone originally described.
We track this kind of thing closely because it's part of understanding a town, not because it changes any transaction. If you're curious how infrastructure shifts like these tend to ripple into property values along A1A over time, or you just want a neighbor's read on what's coming next, Bernal & Hudson is easy to reach, and we're always glad to talk shop about the town we live and work in.
