Construction Update: At the Palm Beach Town Council meeting on Tuesday, July 9, 2024, it was announced that representatives from the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, Burkhardt Construction, and the Town of Palm Beach have jointly agreed to re-bid the Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) for the Phipps Ocean Park restoration project in an effort to obtain more competitive responses from a broader group of subcontractors. Construction on the project was scheduled to begin in June, but now will be delayed until early 2025.
“While we are all enthusiastic to begin construction on this highly anticipated project, ensuring the judicious allocation of funds through thorough due diligence is a crucial step that cannot be hurried nor neglected. We look forward to construction proceeding as expeditiously as possible once the re-bidding process is complete.”
President & CEO
Thanks to the generosity of friends like you, the Preservation Foundation will be delighted to welcome the residents of Palm Beach to the grand opening of Phipps Ocean Park.
Together, we will celebrate the transformation of this long-underutilized space into an extraordinary public landscape that fully realizes the Phipps family’s vision for their 1948 gift: a beautiful public beach and oceanfront park where people can play, learn, and celebrate the unique scenic quality of Palm Beach.
The revitalized park will immerse visitors in a landscape of native Florida plants and numerous recreational areas, teach new generations to understand the past, and encourage the Palm Beach community to protect the places that make our town special.
A key component of this project will be the relocation of the Little Red Schoolhouse, Southeast Florida’s first schoolhouse and the oldest landmark in Palm Beach, to a higher elevation near the dune, where it will be protected from frequent flooding and high winds. This relocation will ensure that the schoolchildren of Palm Beach County have continuous access to the Preservation Foundation’s living history program, which takes fourth graders back in time to receive an 1890s education for a day and experience what it would have been like to study in a one-room wooden schoolhouse.
The Schoolhouse will be adjacent to the brand-new Coastal Restoration Center, a nursery and propagation facility for native plants that will support healthy beach dune ecosystems within the park and throughout the town.
We need your help to complete the $30 million Extraordinary Spaces @Phipps Ocean Park campaign and fully realize the Phipps family’s vision for this Palm Beach treasure — a public beach and park extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway, with 1,200 feet of oceanfront.
Your gift to Extraordinary Spaces @Phipps Ocean Park is very much appreciated.
Please contact Director of Advancement Lauren Clyman at lclyman@palmbeachpreservation.org to discuss naming opportunities.
