Milani Park Is Finally Happening. The Family It's Named For Wants It Stopped.

"To date, we have resisted those pleas. Today that changes."

Cam Milani II wrote those words to Palm Beach County officials in the spring of 2025. For nearly four decades, his family had been the driving force behind building a public park on land they sold to the county in 1987. Then, in a letter that stunned the commissioners who'd spent years fighting the town over this exact project, the Milanis switched sides. They asked the county to abandon the park altogether, or at minimum shrink it dramatically.

If you live in Highland Beach, you already know the outline of this story. It's the town's only shot at public beach access, on a stretch of coast where every grain of sand is currently private property. What most residents haven't caught up on is that the people who wanted this park longest are now among the ones asking the county to pump the brakes, and permits to build it have already been filed anyway.

Here's where things actually stand.

How a Family's Own Park Became a Family Problem

Cam Milani and his wife Lucia bought just over five acres on the south end of town in 1974, planning an apartment complex. The town fought it for years. In 1987, worn down by litigation, the Milanis sold the parcel to Palm Beach County for $3.9 million on one condition: the land would become a public park named after Cam. He died the year before the sale closed.

For the next 37 years, the Milani family pressed the county to keep that promise while Highland Beach pressed just as hard to break it. Town commissioners passed Resolution No. 24-003 asking the county to sell the property instead, arguing the land could be worth close to $50 million and that a 100-car parking lot across from private residences would bring traffic and safety problems the town didn't need.

Then in May 2025, the Milanis reversed course. Lucia Milani, who still lives near the site, testified that after years of residents pleading their case to her directly, she'd come around to their view. Cam Milani II asked the county to cut the west-side parking from 100 spaces to 25 at minimum, or scrap construction entirely. County Commissioner Marci Woodward, whose district includes Highland Beach, called the timing of the reversal a complete surprise. She also made clear the project wasn't going away: the county had already hired an architect and had deadlines to meet under its own settlement terms or risk losing the land.

The Parking Number That Kept Shrinking

The parking lot was always the real fight, and the number attached to it moved three times before anyone broke ground.

The county's hands were legally tied by a 2010 settlement requiring 100 spaces on that side of State Road A1A, one of more than 40 conditions built into the agreement. Reopening that settlement wasn't an option county staff wanted to pursue. So Woodward and County Administrator Joe Abruzzo worked out a phased compromise with Mayor Natasha Moore and Town Manager Marshall Labadie: build 46 spaces now, leave the remaining 54 for an undetermined second phase, and turn the rest of the west parcel into open green space with trees rather than more pavement. Woodward described it as the most palatable option for what she called "a small, peaceful park in a small, peaceful town."

The Design That Changed a Few Minds

Before the compromise, before the reversal, there was a rendering that reportedly won over some of the park's harshest critics.

Palm Beach County hired the architecture firm Brooks & Scarpa, led on this project by Jeffrey Huber, to design the park. When the firm's 3D model went on display at Highland Beach Town Hall in early 2025, resident Maggie Chappelear, who had submitted her own ideas and was later invited to share them directly with the architects, said she'd expected a plain asphalt lot and instead saw something built around the natural site rather than paved over it.

That design work is also where the county's public art program comes in. Palm Beach County put out a call for an artist to design imagery for the elevated boardwalk's Accoya wood railing panels and seat tops, roughly 1,300 to 1,600 square feet of surface, with a budget just north of $57,000. The brief asked for artwork inspired by the site's coastal ecology and its historical and cultural heritage, a detail that matters more once you know what's actually sitting on that shoreline.

Yamato Rock Is the Reason Anyone Wants to Get There

The park's east parcel, the beach side, includes Yamato Rock, a rocky outcropping that's been a favorite local snorkeling spot for years. The name traces back to the Yamato Colony, an early 20th century Japanese American farming settlement in what's now Boca Raton, and the site is considered archaeologically significant enough that the county's own project files flag it for that reason. It's the kind of landmark that explains why this fight has lasted so long. The land isn't generic oceanfront. It's a specific, named piece of shoreline that residents have been walking past on private property for decades without being able to legally stop.

Two Start Dates, One Uncertain Finish

Back in April, the county filed permit applications and a compliance package with the town, and officials told The Coastal Star that construction could begin as early as that June, running about 18 months to a completion sometime in fall 2027, according to Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation Director Jennifer Cirillo. That June window has already come and gone. As of this writing in late August, there's no public confirmation in the county's own records that a contractor has broken ground.

A separate construction-manager bid the county issued around the same time points to a later start: September 2026, with a finish by September 2027 and a preliminary construction cost estimate of $7 million, a step down from the $8.6 million figure the county had cited publicly for most of 2025. That would put the actual start just weeks from now. Whether the lower number reflects real savings or just an early-stage estimate that moves again once a contract is signed isn't clear yet.

If you live here, the thing worth watching isn't which of these two dates turns out to be right. It's whether a contractor gets formally selected and equipment shows up on site. Permitting and procurement are exactly the stages that have stalled this project before, more than once, over the past 40 years.

What This Means If You Live Here

Highland Beach is not getting a resort-style county park. What's coming, eventually, is a modest 5-plus-acre site with a lifeguard station, restrooms, a guard house, an elevated boardwalk with locally themed artwork, and a first-phase lot with 38 general parking spaces, plus a section of green space where a much larger lot was originally planned. It is also, for the first time in the town's history, a legal way to reach the sand without living on it or knowing someone who does.

The most useful thing you can do right now is keep an eye on the town's own Milani Park page, where meeting notices and commission updates get posted, and on The Coastal Star's ongoing coverage, which has tracked this project's every reversal for years. Given how many times this timeline has shifted, that's a better source of truth than any single announced start date, including the ones in this article.

If you're weighing what a property near this stretch of coastline is actually worth once public beach access finally exists here, or you're curious how a project like this tends to shift buyer interest in the surrounding blocks, the team at Tinka Ellington Group tracks these local shifts closely along the Boca Raton to Pompano Beach corridor. Request a Private Consultation whenever you're ready to talk through what it means for your own address.