North Palm Beach Is Quietly Rebuilding Its Relationship With the Water
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
On the morning of July 27, Anchorage Park filled with dogs. The Village's "Dog Days of Summer" event ran from 8 to 9 a.m., and the leashes and the sniffing and the occasional bark happened on a trail surface that, a few months earlier, would have looked and felt noticeably rougher underfoot. That's not an accident of timing. It's the visible edge of a bigger pattern this year: North Palm Beach is putting real money and real attention into the handful of places where residents actually meet the water, and if you live here, you'll notice it whether or not you own a kayak.
Most of the recent coverage of Palm Beach County has been about restaurants. New dining districts opening in West Palm Beach, chef-driven concepts landing in Lake Park and Jupiter. North Palm Beach's story this year is different, and less flashy: a park, a bridge, and a municipal golf course that changed how it pays its own bills. None of these things individually would justify a headline. Together, they say something about where this Village is putting its effort, and it's worth understanding if you're the one walking the dog, launching the kayak, or standing on a dock in December watching lit-up boats go by.
Anchorage Park sits on 603 Anchorage Drive and covers 20.65 acres, enough ground to hold two activity buildings, four lighted sand volleyball courts, a children's playground and tot lot, two tennis courts, and youth baseball fields. It's the kind of park that's been quietly central to daily life here for a long time without needing to change much.
This year it's changing. A Recreation Trails Program grant is funding a resurfacing of the park's existing path, an upgrade to select fitness features along that trail, and an improved kayak launch on the property's south side. The Village opened the process to residents directly, holding a "Make Your Mark on the Park" input session on July 23, four days before the Dog Days event, so the people who use the trail every morning had a say in how it gets rebuilt.
If you've paddled out of Anchorage Park before, the launch itself is what's getting the attention now, not just the surrounding trail. That distinction matters if you're someone who's been putting a kayak in the water there for years and has learned to work around the old setup.
The other project running in parallel is less visible from inside the park but affects how you get there. The Village describes a "resilient replacement" of the historic Lighthouse Bridge as currently underway, framed as an effort to meet modern transportation demands while keeping the corridor connected. It's the kind of project that shows up on a public meeting agenda long before most residents notice it on the road.
The overlap is the point. Anyone driving toward Anchorage Park this year to use the newly improved kayak launch may be routing around active bridge work at the same time. Neither project is dramatic on its own. Running concurrently, they're a fair description of what "under construction" actually means in North Palm Beach in 2026: not one big visible thing, but two smaller ones that happen to intersect on the way to the water.
The third piece of this is less obvious and more interesting if you follow how the Village runs its own books. Beginning in fiscal year 2026, the golf operation at North Palm Beach Country Club started paying $200,000 annually in rent to the Village for use of the clubhouse, calculated on occupied square footage. The Clubhouse restaurant, run by Lessing's Hospitality Group, pays its own separate rent for the space it occupies inside the building.
That's a shift from treating the club purely as a community amenity the Village underwrites, and it lines up with a stated strategic goal in the club's FY2026 budget: continue enhancing the golf course, clubhouse grounds, and amenities while positioning the club as a destination for traveling golfers and corporate groups, not just a Tuesday-morning muni round for residents. The course, a Jack Nicklaus Signature design, earned a national top-20 municipal ranking from Golf Magazine in 2021 and held the Boardroom magazine and Forbes Travel Guide Distinguished Golf Destination award every year from 2020 through 2024. It's a course with a real reputation now paying its way like a business with one.
None of that changes what the course feels like to play. It does mean the Village is treating its most polished public asset less like a subsidized perk and more like something expected to carry its own weight, the same instinct that's funding the Anchorage Park trail through a grant rather than a blank check.
The clearest evidence that this is a water-first Village, not just a park-with-a-golf-course Village, shows up once a year in December. The Marine Industries Association of Palm Beach County runs the Holiday Boat Parade every year, and 2026 marks the 31st annual edition, scheduled for Saturday, December 5. A Zambelli traveling fireworks display leads the parade up the Intracoastal Waterway from North Palm Beach to the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse, starting at 6 p.m. and arriving in Jupiter around 8.
If you plan to watch it from a boat, the official parade page publishes estimated bridge-opening times along the route, and they're worth writing down rather than guessing at on the night:
One detail that separates a longtime resident from a first-timer: anchoring directly in front of North Palm Beach Marina or North Palm Beach Country Club to watch is against the rules, and law enforcement will ask you to move. The organizers instead point boaters toward Ski Beach or anywhere between Donald Ross Road and Indiantown Road, out of the parade's direct path. It's a small logistical fact, but it's the difference between watching the parade and getting waved off mid-viewing.
The Country Club, notably, is also the Village's official public viewing spot for the parade from land, the same building that now pays its own rent and hosts the July 4th fireworks over the golf course. Whether it's a summer holiday or a December parade, the club keeps showing up as the place where the Village gathers to face the water together.
None of this happens against an empty backdrop. The daily texture in North Palm Beach still runs through a small set of specific, familiar places. Frigate's Waterfront Bar & Grill, tucked canal-side under a canopy of moss-draped oaks, is still the place for fish and chips and a bartender who knows what you're having before you order it. Duffy's Sports Grill keeps its reputation for consistent service on game nights, whether that's a UFC card or an NBA playoff run. The Groves Coffee House still fills its sun-drenched tables with açaí bowls and locally roasted coffee most mornings. Paddy Mac's keeps its live music calendar going, with the Andrew Morris Band Trio playing a set there on July 3. And Doris Italian Market and Bakery kept its regular wine night tradition going on July 11, the kind of evening that's easy to miss unless you're already on the mailing list.
None of these places changed this year. That's the actual point. The Village is investing in the corridor that connects them, the park path, the launch, the bridge, the club, the parade route, while the businesses that make up daily life stay exactly where they've always been. The infrastructure is catching up to how people already live here, not the other way around.
If you're weighing what a year like this means for a specific block or a specific stretch of waterfront in North Palm Beach, that's the kind of granular, project-by-project read The Homeseeker Group tracks for clients across Palm Beach County. Schedule a consultation with Stacy Plean's team when you're ready to talk through what's actually changing here, not just what's changing on paper.
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