"As a kid riding my bike, I remember weaving around the lamp posts," Ted Cooney, then chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, told the Palm Beach Daily News in November 2013. He had asked the town to protect the ficus canopy over North County Road between Wells Road and Miraflores Drive. At that hearing he also said he hoped the town would someday bury the power lines that ran under those branches.
Thirteen years later, most of that hope is coming true in a single season. North County Road is open again at Wells Road. The undergrounding program is in its last phases. And according to the Town of Palm Beach, the corner where Wells Road, Crescent Drive and North County Road meet will open as a park in December, along with a new tree canopy on North County. The North End's gateway has been patched one tree at a time for decades. This winter it comes back as one finished piece.
A Road the Hurricanes Drew
You can only understand the canopy if you know why North County Road is so wide there. The 1926 and 1928 hurricanes washed out North Ocean Boulevard, which used to run farther north along the beach than it does today. After the 1928 storm, residents asked the town to abandon North Ocean Boulevard from Wells Road to the Palm Beach Country Club. In exchange, the petitioners, seven large landowners among them, widened County Road, then called Palm Beach Avenue, from 30 feet to 70 feet, and to 85 feet in places.
The 1930 rebuild created the divided road North End residents know today. It has a median, a wide sidewalk and a bicycle path on the west side, all shaded by Ficus benjamina, a non-native tree that can grow to 100 feet. Over the years other ficus were added, including Ficus nitida. Town preservation consultant Emily Stillings explained this to the landmarks panel in 2013. The canopy is a landscape by accident, the side effect of a road deal made after a storm.
The Wells Road side has its own protected view. In 2013 the Australian-pine vista on Wells Road was already a landmark, and the town needed a state exemption to replant a species Florida law treats as invasive. The new park is going in at the meeting point of these two landmarks.
What the 2014 Landmark Could Not Fix
The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 6–1 in November 2013 to recommend protecting the canopy. Commissioner Jacqueline Albarran called it "one of the most important vistas in Palm Beach" and pointed to the damage whitefly and hurricanes had already done. The Palm Beach Daily News reported in January 2014 that the Town Council had approved it as a landmarked district.
The designation protected the canopy, but it did not solve the two problems raised at the hearing. The first was the wires. Florida Power & Light lines ran along the road, and the town had no agreement with the utility about trimming. The second was the trees themselves. At a Town Council meeting on February 11, 2026, Council President Lindsay recalled what happened next, as recorded in the meeting minutes. Whitefly weakened the Ficus benjamina, which left them open to Hypoxylon canker, a fatal disease. Public Works asked the Garden Club to form a task force. Two independent horticulturists both recommended replacing the affected trees with Ficus aurea, the strangler fig, which is Florida's native banyan. The town took that advice and has replaced canopy trees with Ficus aurea as they declined.
So the canopy over North County Road is slowly changing species, one replacement at a time. At the same February meeting a resident asked the town to remove ficus on the east side of North County Road where no historic or specimen trees stand, and to replant with other species while the undergrounding work was underway. Council President Pro Tem Crampton referred him to Public Works Director Paul Brazil. The minutes also note median and landscaping work already underway on North County Road.
Twenty-One Months of Groundwork, Then a Single Opening
The open questions from 2013 have been settled through a run of separate approvals and construction jobs. In order:
- March 1, 2025. The Palm Beach Daily News reported that the Town Council had approved conceptual design plans for a park near the redesigned North Fire Station and accepted a private donation to build it.
- March 19, 2025. The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the right-of-way and park improvements inside the Wells Road Scenic Vista 7–0.
- April 9, 2025. The Town Council unanimously approved a special exception with site plan review. It allowed a small pocket park and changes to the intersection, which the Palm Beach Daily News described as hazardous.
- June 2026. The Town Council agenda included a resolution to accept a $265,000 donation for construction of Wells Park.
- October 14, 2026. Both directions of North County Road between Wells Road and Tangier Avenue reopened after drainage work, deputy town engineer Julie Parham told the Palm Beach Daily News.
- October 2026. The town's Town Tides newsletter reported that undergrounding Phase 7N was complete and scheduled for landscaping this fall. Phases 7S and 8 are the last ones still in progress.
- December 2026. The new park at Wells Road and North County, together with the new North County tree canopy, is scheduled to open.
The Undergrounding Program guide defines Phase 7N as the Palm Beach Country Club-to-List Road area and Phase 8 as Royal Poinciana Way north to Everglade Avenue. The town has said all Phase 8 construction will stay on east-west streets so traffic on north-south roads like North County is not affected. Cooney imagined buried lines in 2013. Now that program is close to finished.
The Corner Becomes a Park
The plans for the park itself are modest, which suits a scenic vista. Dustin Mizell of Environment Design Group presented the landscape and hardscape plans to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. They showed added plantings, a new lawn, native plants, and a hedge that is already on the site. One commissioner asked how the neighboring property would be screened. Mizell pointed to the extra plantings. Commissioner Griswold suggested moving the water fountain away from the adjacent neighbor, and Mizell agreed.
Ms. Herzig-Desnick thought the project was lovely and would be a nice gateway to the island's north end.
That line is from the March 19, 2025 Landmarks minutes. It echoes how the Palm Beach Daily News described the canopy in 2013, as "a grand arboreal gateway to the North End." Both a park and a road fix came out of the same approval. The Council's special exception covered the pocket park and the changes to the Wells Road, Crescent Drive and North County Road intersection together. The space that was a three-way junction becomes a lawn under the old trees.
The Weeks Before December
The final stretch of work is still on the schedule. The town's November 6 notice set night work on North County Road between Wells Road and Miraflores Drive for November 9 and 10. It also listed lane closures on North County Road from Seminole Avenue to Royal Poinciana Way and from Atlantic Avenue to Sunrise Avenue, on North Lake Way between Wells Road and Sanford Avenue, and moving temporary lane closures for sidewalk restoration on Wells Road between North Ocean Boulevard and Bradley Place. These notices are issued weekly, so the town's news page will carry the most recent list.
The seasonal rules took effect November 1. Winter construction and lawn-maintenance hours began, and yard trash can go out on the street only one day before the Tuesday-through-Friday collection days. The town also expects to release 2027 Parkmobile and Residential Parking Permits in late November.
Then comes December. The pocket park opens where Wells Road meets North County, a new canopy goes in along the road the 1928 hurricane created, and the undergrounding program that the canopy's defenders hoped for in 2013 is down to its final phases.
A North End address comes with the canopy, the vista and the history behind them. If you are thinking about what this gateway project means for a property near Wells Road or along North County, Elizabeth DeWoody follows these corridors closely and is glad to talk it through. Work With Elizabeth.
