Palm Beach Is Burying Its Power Lines From the Ends Inward, and Your Street Sets the Wait

On Aug. 6, crews took down power lines and utility poles along South County Road near The Breakers. The Palm Beach Daily News photographed the work for a story about why buyers keep asking about it, later republished by the Boca Raton Tribune. At a July council update, Town Engineer Patricia Strayer showed before-and-after images of South County Road near Pine Walk, where the poles were already gone. "It's beautiful," she said.

The same week this post goes up, a few blocks north, the town's own work notice lists lane closures for directional drilling on North County Road from Atlantic Avenue to Royal Poinciana Way. The town's $128 million project to bury every overhead electric, phone and cable line is now expected to finish in late 2027. On an island 16 miles long, two homes at similar prices can sit on either side of that finish line. One street already has the clean sightlines agents point to. The other is in the middle of the project's hardest stretch.

The plan finished the ends first on purpose

The town didn't bury the lines street by street from one end to the other. In a September 2025 Palm Beach Daily News explainer, Strayer said the order of work was based on traffic. If crews had started in the middle of the island and worked outward, North End residents would have lived with construction for the full 10 years. "By starting at the ends and working your way in, you're limiting the impact on residents there," she said.

That plan worked well at the edges. Strayer said Phases 3 North and 4 North finished fastest, and all the north phases from 1 North to 6 North came in on or ahead of schedule. The middle was a different story. FPL already ran part of its network underground there, including 11 lines across the Intracoastal. Tying those into the new system between Southern Boulevard and Royal Poinciana Way meant FPL had to redo its design "over and over again." Phase 6 South ran past its timeline and spilled into Phase 8. "While the planning was not to have the construction converge at Royal Poinciana, we have just had this quagmire of construction and traffic," Strayer said.

The map below uses the town's phase boundaries and the most recent status reported for each phase.

Phase 8 trails the rest. In the August Daily News story, Public Works Director Jason Debrincat said work there was delayed after FPL redesigned portions of it once the construction contract had been awarded and work had started. A Palm Beach Daily News report from Oct. 14 calls it a significant FPL redesign. The council approved that phase in December 2024 with a $16.1 million construction budget, according to the Palm Beach Civic Association.

What an unfinished street looks like in a given week

Each finished zone went through a fixed sequence. Crews bore conduit and set equipment, then come back to pull wire, install transformer vaults and energize the new system. Only after that are individual homes connected. Then FPL de-energizes the overhead lines and pulls the poles. A home in an active phase can be at any step of that sequence. The step it has reached matters more than the phase name.

The town's notice for the week of Oct. 19, 2026 shows the range:

• Phase 7 North: pole and wire removal on Tradewind Drive and Bahama Lane between N. Lake Way and N. Ocean, with the road closed to all but local traffic. This work is pending the crew's return from storm duty.
• Phase 7 South: service conduits going into back yards at various locations, plus primary and feeder wire work on Bradley Place and N. Lake Way between Dunbar Road and Sanford Avenue. The wire work is listed as on hold.
• Phase 8: tie-ins on Atlantic Avenue, on Everglade Avenue and along N. County Road, service drilling on the north side of Seminole Avenue, and concrete restoration on Bradley Place from Royal Poinciana Way north to Sunrise Avenue. All of it comes with lane closures.
• Separate from undergrounding: a new water main on Cocoanut Row between Royal Poinciana Way and Pendleton Avenue, with a southbound lane closure and flaggers.

The back-yard conduit work in Phase 7 South means that in the unfinished zones, the work doesn't stay on the road.

The easement is a request, and its terms set the limits

The new underground network needs equipment sites, and some of those sit on private land. Strayer told the Palm Beach Daily News that getting easements has been one of the project's biggest challenges, because the town has to seek them voluntarily. The town has not forced anyone to grant an easement, and it has not paid for one.

The town's 2018 guide to utility easements explains that an easement can limit what gets built or planted inside its defined area, depending on the terms of the agreement. A buyer planning a pool, a new hedge line or a rebuild on a lot in Phase 7 South or Phase 8 can ask early whether an easement has been granted and on what terms. A pending request from the town is not the same as a granted easement. The Town of Palm Beach or a real estate attorney can say what applies to a specific parcel. Easements have slowed the project before. In 2020, the Palm Beach Daily News reported that missing easements delayed bidding and construction in Phase 3 South, and the town considered pushing that phase to the end of the program.

The published completion date has shifted from spring to late 2027

The completion date itself has changed over the past year. In September 2025, the Daily News reported that the project was on schedule to wrap up by spring 2027. The Oct. 14, 2026 report puts completion in late 2027.

The same report explains one cause of the uneven pace. When FPL sends crews to restore power after a storm elsewhere, pole removal in Palm Beach stops until they return. Strayer said the town doesn't keep detailed records of those deployments. The longest delay from one was about a month, and she said they had not significantly delayed the overall schedule. Mayor Danielle Moore put the trade-off plainly: "Of course, life safety is much more important than pulling (down) power poles."

A buyer on Tradewind Drive this week can see that pause directly. Their pole removal is listed as waiting on a crew back from storm duty. For anyone timing a purchase around a finished streetscape, the reliable date is the most recent one the town has published. Hurricane season can push that date later.

The tax bill line covers the whole island

The construction map divides the island. The way the project is paid for does not. Voters approved a $90 million bond issue in a 2016 referendum by 2,170 votes to 2,110, a margin of 50.7% to 49.3%, according to the Palm Beach Daily News. The town's FY2026 budget sets aside $1,570,000 in principal and $2,277,355 in interest for undergrounding debt service.

Owners pay through a special assessment. The Palm Beach County Property Appraiser lists it as a non-ad valorem charge named "City_Wide Underground Utility." Non-ad valorem means it isn't calculated from the property's value. When the town set up the assessment in 2017, it said collection would run through the property tax bill in up to 30 annual installments.

According to the town's cost search tool, each parcel's share is based on three benefits: safety at 30.8%, reliability at 38.4% and aesthetics at 30.8%. The factors include land use, lot size, population density and whether the property had overhead utilities. The tool's averages, $1,190.71 a year for a single-family home and $331 for a condominium, are labeled as initial estimates built on financing assumptions. They are not a quote for any particular parcel. For an actual figure, the town's finance page points owners to the Property Tax Detail on the Property Appraiser's site and to the Town Finance Department.

Put the two maps together and a buyer on Seminole Avenue and a buyer near Sloan's Curve both find this charge on their tax bill. In late 2026, only one of them is looking at a street without poles. This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Please confirm how the assessment applies to a specific property with the Town Finance Department, your attorney or your tax advisor.

None of this has turned buyers away from the island. Board of Realtors president John Duerr told the Palm Beach Daily News, in the story republished by the Boca Raton Tribune, that the overhead lines haven't "impeded on people buying here," and that underground utilities are "a big selling point." The practical question for a buyer is when that selling point arrives on their street. Between Royal Poinciana Way and Everglade Avenue, the town's latest answer is late 2027.

If you're comparing homes on Palm Beach and want to know where a street stands in the undergrounding sequence, whether an easement is recorded or has been requested, and how the assessment appears on that parcel's tax bill, Jeanne Gordon can help you gather those answers before you make an offer. If you own on the island and are considering a sale, you can also request a home valuation that takes into account how far along your phase is.