Drive south on A1A toward the Boca Raton line and there is a stretch of chain-link fence most residents have learned to stop noticing. Behind it sits a parcel split by the road itself, half beach and dune, half a vacant grass lot that has done nothing but grow weeds since Palm Beach County bought it in 1987. For nearly forty years, the project has been marked by delay and legal disputes.

This year the project moved forward. Permits are filed. A construction budget is set. The county did not use its remaining extension option.

A Rock With Two Names

The reason anyone fought over this parcel at all sits just offshore: a low limestone and coral outcropping that surfaces at low tide, visible from the dune walkover if you know where to look. Longtime residents call it Yamato Rock, a name that traces back to the Japanese farming settlers of the Yamato Colony, who fished the outcropping in the early twentieth century, decades before Highland Beach existed as a town. For years it carried a cruder name, one the county has since retired in favor of Yamato Rock in every official document tied to the park.

Long before Cam Milani ever bought the surrounding land in the 1970s with plans for 130 apartment units, the rock belonged to local families. A family owned the property facing it starting around 1955, and one account recalls the rock as the site of childhood birthday parties, where incoming waves would shoot up through the crevices like small geysers. That kind of memory does not show up in a zoning file, but it explains why the rock still matters to people who never once cared about parking counts.

Today it draws snorkelers who come for fire coral, angelfish and damselfish, and anglers working the same water for snook, tarpon and jacks. In November 2024, the Florida Department of State granted historic preservation status to the 2.31-acre southern parcel that includes the rock, a designation the county sought specifically because of its documented connection to the Yamato Colony.

The Extension Nobody Used

The mechanism that kept this project frozen for so long is worth understanding, because it is also the reason this year is different.

In 2010, the county and the town signed a settlement agreement that let the county delay construction, first to 2020, with two additional five-year extension options attached, pushing the outer limit to 2030. The county exercised its first extension in 2019, buying itself until 2025. Highland Beach's own 2025-2026 Strategic Priorities Plan, published in March of this year, still lists one more five-year extension as available to the county on paper.

The county chose not to take it. In April 2026, Palm Beach County filed permit applications and a compliance package with the town documenting how it had satisfied the 2010 settlement's 43 conditions, according to reporting from The Coastal Star. County officials told the outlet that construction could begin as early as June 2026 and take roughly 18 months, putting completion around fall 2027.

The county's decision marks a change in the project's timeline. The county used its first extension in 2019, but declined the remaining option.

What $8.6 Million Actually Buys

The finished park will not resemble the beach clubs and private condo pools that define most of Highland Beach's shoreline. County plans call for a guardhouse with a controlled gate at the parking entrance, an elevated boardwalk designed to avoid disturbing the dune, a restroom and lifeguard building, and Mobi-Mats extending from the boardwalk to the sand to improve access for seniors and visitors with disabilities.

Parking has been the single biggest sticking point for three decades, and it is the one piece of the plan that visibly bent under local pressure. The original proposal called for 100 spaces. Late last year the county agreed to open with somewhere between 38 and 46 spaces on the western parcel, a compromise the town's Strategic Priorities Plan credits with easing the years of opposition tied to traffic and safety concerns. The full project, funded through county impact fees, carries a construction budget of $8.6 million.

The Argument That's Left

Not every objection disappeared with the permit filing. Highland Beach resident Ron Reame told county commissioners the land carried an estimated market value of $45 million and argued the county would be better served selling it and funding parks elsewhere in the county rather than building on 400 feet of beach next to Yamato Rock. Residents of the adjacent Boca Highland Beach Club and Marina have raised similar concerns for years about traffic and safety on a stretch of A1A that was never built for a public parking lot.

County leaders have framed the site differently, describing the stretch of coastline between Delray Beach and southern Boca Raton as a gap with no true public beach access at all. That framing matters here because it is factually accurate: Highland Beach today has no public beach access anywhere within its borders. Every foot of its three-mile shoreline sits behind private condominiums and residential associations. Milani Park would be the only exception.

What This Means If You Already Live Here

None of this changes property lines or HOA rules for existing residents. What it does change is the character of the south end of town, an area that has been a quiet, mostly forgotten stretch of A1A for as long as most current homeowners have lived here. Within roughly the next 18 months, that stretch gets a guardhouse, a parking lot, a lifeguard stand and foot traffic from outside the town for the first time in Highland Beach's history.

The timing lines up with the town's own rebranding push. That same March 2026 Strategic Priorities Plan uses the phrase "three miles of paradise" for the town's forward-facing identity and notes that the county still had one more five-year extension option available. How the town incorporates the park into that identity remains an open question. What is not open anymore is whether construction happens. The paperwork pointed to June. The rock has been waiting considerably longer than that.

If you're weighing what a change like this means for property values, rental demand, or your own plans on the south end of Highland Beach, Fran Hall Finch tracks these shifts as part of a broader read on coastal Palm Beach County. Let's Connect.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.