At the corner of NW 2nd Avenue and Jeffrey Street in Boca Teeca, five commissioners from the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District put shovels in the dirt on a Thursday morning in early September. They stood in a parking lot beside a racquet club due to open in November, a short walk from a children's traffic course that has been open for more than a year.
That corner is where North Park lives right now. The park is being built on the former Ocean Breeze golf course, about 212 acres in total, and it is filling in from one edge. Both features you can use this fall sit along Jeffrey Street. The trails come next, and the District forecasts them for June 2027. About 140 acres on the west side, the largest single piece of the property, currently have no plan under consideration. For anyone living within biking distance, the useful version of North Park is a corner park for at least the next year.
The first door opened on old tennis courts
The North Park Traffic Garden at 5805 NW 2nd Ave was the first feature to open. It had a soft opening in August 2025 and a formal ribbon cutting on September 4, 2025. It started as a low-cost experiment. In November 2024 the District board approved resurfacing the old tennis courts and repairing the parking lot next to them, a cheaper interim use than sodding and irrigating the site. All County Paving did the resurfacing and striping in early 2025, and Schiff Construction added the paint, thermoplastic striping and portable signs.
The result is a small street grid at kid scale. It has painted lanes, stop and yield signs, one-way markings, crosswalks and bike lanes, so children on bicycles or push scooters can practice road rules without real traffic. Boca Magazine reported that it is free to use, that motorized bikes, boards and vehicles are not allowed, and that riders should bring helmets. The site has restrooms, shaded bleachers for supervising adults, and a parking lot right next to it.
The garden was meant to be temporary, and that matters more than it seems. The District's September 2026 capital update says the site "will remain available for community use until future redevelopment occurs," and adds that families and schools have already made it popular. Because nothing is planned for the surrounding land yet, the garden has no end date.
November 18 adds a second door on the same street
The second feature, Boca Paddle by CityPickle, is scheduled to open November 18 at West Jeffrey Street and North Dixie Highway, north of Yamato Road. The Palm Beach Post reports that its developers expect the 100,000-square-foot club to be the largest indoor pickleball and padel facility in Florida.
The numbers that matter most to a local player:
- Courts: 25 in total, with 19 cushioned pickleball courts and six high-clearance padel courts.
- Indoor share: 16 courts are indoors and air-conditioned, 14 for pickleball and two for padel. Of the nine outdoor courts, five are covered.
- Stadium: a 1,000-seat show court called The Royal Court, which will be home to the Palm Beach Royals of Major League Pickleball.
- Pricing: memberships from $49 to $149, a premium tier at $299, and no initiation fee. Day passes are $35 for Boca Raton residents and $40 for nonresidents.
- Food: Farmer's Kitchen, a full-service restaurant run by Mitchell Robbins of the Farmer's Table, open to the public.
Each court will have cameras and a 70-inch monitor for scoring and replays. The building also includes locker rooms with showers, saunas, a cold-plunge pool, physical therapy, co-working space and private phone booths. Programming covers clinics, lessons, open play, leagues and tournaments, with courts set aside for first-time players. Co-founder Brian Levine, a Boca Raton resident, told the Post he hopes people who have never picked up a paddle will come in for dinner and drinks and watch a match.
Who owns the club matters as much as the court count. The District's capital update describes Boca Paddle as a public-private partnership. The District owns the facility and the land, and Boca Paddle operates it. Sources report different costs. The District's document says $17 million, and the Post quotes Levine at $20 million. The dates are not in dispute. The club broke ground in June 2025, construction started that August, and the opening is now about five weeks away.
The trails are the piece most people have been waiting for
East of NW 2nd Avenue, the District is building on roughly 70 acres. Plans call for more than five miles of walking and riding trails, some with exercise equipment, plus a dog park, a playground and more than 1,000 native trees. The Boca Raton Tribune reported that the contract scope also covers mountain-bike trails, gardens, restrooms, a maintenance building and parking. The contract with Butters Construction & Development is worth $19,741,054.81.
Getting to this point took three tries:
- July 2025: The District asked for qualifications. Nine firms responded and six made the shortlist.
- First bid round: All four bids came in over budget and were rejected.
- Second bid round: Four more bids arrived. While they were being evaluated, the City took over the pedestrian tunnel portion of the project, which changed the scope enough that those bids were rejected too.
- Third round: The board awarded the contract to Butters in June 2026.
- September 2026: Groundbreaking.
- June 2027: Forecast for substantial completion.
Crews have already started clearing invasive trees and plants, which the District says code requires. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is helping make sure soil contaminated during the golf course years gets remediated, and the whole project is set to follow Sustainable SITES Initiative standards.
That remediation step helps explain the timeline. Before a dog park or a playground can go in, the ground under a former fairway has to be cleaned up. June 2027 is a forecast, and getting this phase to a signed contract alone took three rounds of bidding.
A skatepark and pump track are planned beyond the trails. After two public design workshops in August and December 2025, the board accepted a final concept in January 2026. It includes a street course, pump tracks, bowl and transition areas, and shaded green space. The Community Appearance Board approved it unanimously on September 1, 2026, and the Planning and Zoning Board did the same two days later. The District has since started permitting, but no opening date has been announced.
Where each piece stands as of October 2026
| Feature | Location | Status | Date on record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic Garden | 5805 NW 2nd Ave, near Jeffrey St | Open, free | Opened Sept. 4, 2025 |
| Boca Paddle by CityPickle | W. Jeffrey St and N. Dixie Hwy | Opening soon | Scheduled Nov. 18, 2026 |
| East-side trails, dog park, playground | About 70 acres east of NW 2nd Ave | Under construction | Forecast June 2027 |
| Skatepark and pump track | North Park | Approved, in permitting | No date announced |
| West side | About 140 acres | No plan under consideration | To be set by the board |
The largest piece of the park has no plan
The west side is where North Park's future is most open. After paying off the bond on the western portion early in July 2025, which the District says saved more than $1 million in future interest, the board invited proposals for about 140 acres there. It also invited proposals for a separate 1.8-acre parcel at Jeffrey Street and NW 2nd Avenue. Nine proposals came in, including golf concepts, a YMCA, a Boys & Girls Club, an indoor sports complex, and Boca Surf, which scored highest.
Then each one was dropped. On November 3, 2025, the board rejected Boca Surf and similar surf and aquatics projects for North Park, citing community compatibility and traffic. On November 17 it rejected all remaining proposals for the west side. A proposed 25,000-square-foot Boys & Girls Club on the small parcel stayed in negotiations into 2026, until the board voted 3 to 2 on August 17, 2026, to end them.
The District's own wording is short. As of September 2026, no proposal from the 2025 process remains under consideration, and planning for the western portion "will occur in the future as determined by the Board." Those decisions are made at regular public District board meetings, the same meetings where the surf park, the skatepark and the Boys & Girls Club were discussed.
Before you head over
- Traffic Garden parking: Use the lot right next to the garden, entered from westbound Jeffrey Street.
- What to bring: Helmets for young riders, and non-motorized wheels only.
- Seeing Boca Paddle early: Hard-hat tours could be reserved through the club's booking page starting October 7.
- Walking in from the west: The west pedestrian tunnel is closed while its retaining walls wait for structural and drainage repairs. Construction documents for those repairs are complete.
- The rest of the site: The east side is an active construction zone until the forecast June 2027 finish, so the Jeffrey Street corner is the way into North Park for now.
If you're thinking about how a park still years from completion fits into plans to buy or sell near Boca Teeca and north Boca Raton, the advisors at Engel & Völkers Fort Lauderdale follow projects like North Park closely and are glad to talk through what's confirmed and what's still pending.
