Ask Highland Beach Town Manager Marshall Labadie whether the Ocean Boulevard construction is over, and he'll tell you the barrels are gone. "For most people in town, the project is done," he said in January. "You'll just see a lot of mini-projects here and there during the daytime."
He's right about the road. He's not quite right about the story.
The Florida Department of Transportation's resurfacing of State Road A1A through Highland Beach, the one that started in the spring of 2024 and stretched into last year, reached what officials call "substantially complete" status in January 2026. The pavement is smoother. The bike lanes are painted in and reflective. What started as an $8.8 million budget when FDOT broke ground came in closer to $8.3 million by the time crews packed up, a rare instance of a state road project landing under its original number instead of over it.
But finishing the pavement is not the same as finishing the problem. And if you've walked Ocean Boulevard lately, especially after a hard rain, you already know what that problem is.
The Fix That Needed a Second Fix
Widening a road changes where the water goes. To make room for the new five-foot bike lanes on each side of A1A, crews modified the swales, regraded sections of shoulder, and in places raised the roadway itself slightly above its original grade. Residents flagged the elevation change at town commission meetings while the work was still underway, along with the hedge removal FDOT said was necessary to keep drainage paths clear.
The unresolved part of that trade-off is the shared-use path that runs alongside the road. According to the town's own funding request to the state legislature, the elevation and drainage changes from the FDOT resurfacing have caused flooding and forced pedestrians into travel lanes in places. In other words, the project built to make A1A safer for cyclists and drivers created a new hazard for the people walking it.
That is why a second, separate project is now moving through the pipeline, this one aimed squarely at foot traffic instead of car traffic.
| Phase 1: FDOT Resurfacing | Phase 2: Pedestrian Safety Project | |
|---|---|---|
| Status as of Sept. 2026 | Substantially complete (Jan. 2026) | Approved this summer, not yet installed |
| Funded by | FDOT, state road budget | $375,000 state appropriation |
| What it touches | Travel lanes, bike lanes, swales | Shared-use path, 8 mid-block crosswalks |
| Known open issue | Mistimed signal at A1A/Linton | Flooding pushing walkers into the road |
Where the New Lights Are Actually Going
This summer, Highland Beach commissioners approved a $283,920 agreement with Lux Solar Inc. to install in-ground LED lighting at eight mid-block crosswalks along Ocean Boulevard, part of a broader $375,000 pedestrian safety project that also repaves and regrades the adjacent path to correct the flooding problem. Run the numbers and the split is telling: nearly $284,000 of the $375,000 goes to the crosswalk hardware alone, leaving roughly $91,000 to fix the drainage and path issues that made the lights necessary in the first place. It's a modest budget for a real infrastructure fix, and it explains why this is being framed as a targeted safety project rather than a second full-scale resurfacing.
The locations were identified through a Palm Beach Metropolitan Planning Organization road safety audit of the corridor, and they read like a map of the buildings residents already use as landmarks:
- Grand Court
- Near Regency Highland
- Near Toscana Towers
- At the Highland Beach Club
- At Coronado Ocean Club
- Near Ambassadors East
- Near Monterey House
- Near Delray Sands Resort
If you live in or near any of these buildings, this is the crossing you'll actually use once the lights go in. The new signals are bi-directional, embedded flush in the pavement, and activated by the same push-buttons already installed at several of these intersections, which means the change will be more about what happens underfoot than any new visible pole or sign.
None of this is installed yet. As of this writing, the town's own website still carries a separate notice that the crosswalk signal at 3310 South Ocean Boulevard is out of service, a small but real reminder that the corridor's pedestrian infrastructure is a patchwork in progress, not a finished system.
The Signal That's Still Wrong
The resurfacing project left one other loose thread that has nothing to do with walking and everything to do with the light at A1A and Linton Boulevard, the main entrance to town from the north. Labadie explained the cause during that January update:
"They still have to put together the electrical loop for car activation of signals that was removed during the stormwater piece that they did. Right now, it's not on a demand basis, it's just based on timing set by the county."
Translation: the underground sensor that used to tell the light when a car was actually waiting got pulled out during drainage work and hasn't been replaced. Until it is, the signal runs on a fixed county timer instead of responding to real traffic, which is part of why backups at that intersection have gotten worse with the seasonal return of visitors rather than better after nearly two years of construction. It's a small mechanical detail, but it's the kind of thing that explains a daily annoyance better than "there's construction" ever could.
One Road, Two Errands
Highland Beach's entire built environment sits on a narrow barrier island strip between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal, and the town has only one hotel-restaurant operation of its own, the Delray Sands Resort, home to Latitudes. Everything else, grocery runs, dinner out, coffee, means driving off South Ocean Boulevard in one direction or the other.
North on A1A into Delray Beach, the Sandbar sits just a couple of miles up, an all-outdoor bar and grill that draws a mixed-age crowd for burgers and weekend DJ sets. South into Boca Raton, Le Sorelle has a location built around family recipes from Italy's southern Adriatic coast, and Novello's shaded travertine patio is one of the few places nearby where an outdoor table in August doesn't feel like a mistake.
That geography is exactly why the shared-use path repair matters more than it might look on a town budget line. When the path floods and pushes people into the travel lane, it's not an abstract inconvenience. It's the same stretch of road residents already use to get to the one restaurant in town or to reach the crosswalk that gets them to the beach access point near their building. A resurfaced road and a repaired path are the difference between driving everywhere and being able to walk to some of it.
What to Watch For
The FDOT resurfacing is functionally finished, aside from that signal loop at Linton. The pedestrian project is funded and contracted but not yet built. If you walk or bike Ocean Boulevard regularly, the next real changes you'll notice won't be about pavement quality. They'll be underfoot, at eight specific crossings, whenever the shared-use path work catches up to the lighting contract.
For residents who've watched this corridor evolve over the past two years, this second phase is worth tracking the same way the first one was. The people who live along Ocean Boulevard know its rhythms better than anyone, from which building floods first to which crosswalk actually needs the light.
Branham Properties works this same stretch of coast, and we like knowing the difference between a project that's paved and one that's finished. If you're ever curious what any of this means for your own property, or just want a second opinion on where things stand, Request a Free Home Valuation from the team at Branham Properties.
