Somewhere in the Village of North Palm Beach's records sits a design invoice that would embarrass most municipal budgets. When the Village asked Jack Nicklaus to redesign its public golf course in 2006, Nicklaus, a longtime North Palm Beach resident, charged one dollar for his signature. The course that resulted still runs along the Intracoastal Waterway, still carries his name, and still costs exactly what any other municipal round costs to play.
That detail says more about daily life here than any list of amenities could. In a county where golf usually means a gate, a membership committee, and an initiation fee with several zeros attached, North Palm Beach spent this spring marking a hundred years of a golf course that has belonged to the people who live here, not to a roster of members, for more than six decades.
A Winter Club for Yacht Owners
The course turns 100 this year. Architect Seth Raynor laid it out in 1926 as the Palm Beach Winter Club, built for the same audience Palm Beach itself was courting at the time. According to the Village's own account of the course's history, it was meant as a destination for prospective real estate investors and Palm Beach socialites who drove down for the season or sailed up Lake Worth on their own boats.
That version of the club did not survive as a private amenity. The Village of North Palm Beach bought the course outright in 1962, and public ownership is the only reason a Raynor design from the Roaring Twenties is still walkable today by anyone holding a tee time rather than a membership card.
The Dollar Redesign
Public ownership got its second act in 2006, when the Village brought in Nicklaus for a full redesign, then upgraded the course again in 2019. It reopened as one of only two Nicklaus Signature courses in the entire country that are owned by a municipality rather than a club. Reviewers who cover the course regularly flag its elevation changes as a rarity on the flat terrain that defines most of the county, with fairways built to take advantage of the natural rise along the Intracoastal rather than fight it. The club also points to a Golfweek ranking as the top municipal course in Florida, the kind of claim that would sound like typical clubhouse marketing anywhere else, except here it describes a course anyone can book.
That access is not theoretical. Non-members can reserve tee times up to ten days in advance, and the walk-in rate schedule is posted on the Village's own site the same way a resident might check pool hours or library fines. Dinner afterward runs through Lessing's Hospitality Group, which operates both The Clubhouse Restaurant and The Grill Room on-site. Neither requires a membership to walk in for a plate of local seafood and a sunset over the back nine.
A course designed by a Nicklaus who lives two miles away, for the price of a municipal round.
Four Days That Proved the Point
The Village turned the course's centennial into a four-day run this spring, from Thursday, April 30 through Sunday, May 3. The lineup read like a list of things that usually require a membership card somewhere else in Palm Beach County. A charity golf outing brought out local pros Michelle McGann, Allan Bowman, Craig Lindsey, and Chris Dachisen, with residents welcome to follow the group around by golf cart. A pool party built around a swim team exhibition, relay races, and a floating chipping challenge ran alongside happy hour pricing at The Clubhouse Restaurant. Two glow-in-the-dark tennis sessions came with themed appetizers and live music. A kids' fishing clinic set up on holes 16, 17, and 18 in partnership with the West Palm Beach Fishing Club, poles provided, prizes and donuts waiting at the end. The weekend closed with a ten-minute fireworks show fired directly over the course.
Mayor Lisa Interlandi and Vice Mayor Orlando Puyol turned out alongside general manager Peter Ayoub and head golf professional Allan Bowman to welcome guests, the same officials a resident might otherwise only encounter at a council meeting. None of it required a sponsor's badge. That has been close to the entire point of a course the Village has owned since 1962.
The Water Runs the Same Way
The pattern holds once you leave the fairways. Anchorage Park, at 603 Anchorage Drive, functions as the Village's version of a marina without a gate around it. The Anchorage Aweigh Fishing Tournament returns there every year, now in roughly its twentieth running with one year lost to the pandemic, and it still ends the way small-town fishing tournaments are supposed to: a public weigh-in at the Anchorage Park Marina, a kids' derby with rods and bait supplied, and a cookout with awards at five o'clock. Renting one of the park's volleyball courts costs North Palm Beach residents twenty-five dollars an hour, the kind of price point that only exists because a town, not a club, sets it. This summer's park calendar also rotated through a "Make Your Mark on the Park" session, a "Dog Days of Summer" morning, and a weekly storytime, all free and open without a residency requirement attached to the door.
A few minutes north, John D. MacArthur Beach State Park does for the beach what Anchorage Park does for the marina. It is the only state park in Palm Beach County, spread across 436 acres of barrier island with close to a mile and a half of natural beach, a nature center with live exhibits, and a nonprofit called the Friends of MacArthur Beach State Park that runs volunteer-led tours and a citizen science marine debris program alongside the state park service. Entry runs about five dollars a carload, and a single kayak rents for fifteen dollars an hour or sixty dollars for a full day through the park's own outfitters shop. The nature center's amphitheater hosts a recurring program where visitors meet the park's resident snake ambassadors, with the next sessions scheduled for September 13 and October 10 this year, open to all ages once you are through the gate.
Old Port Cove, the 60-acre peninsula community with its own full-service marina, adds a two-mile waterfront walking and jogging path that circles the property, one of the few stretches of shoreline in the Village where a walk with a water view does not require owning the water yourself.
What This Looks Like on a Given Week
- A walk-in golfer can call the pro shop and book a tee time up to ten days out on a Nicklaus-designed course, no membership required.
- MacArthur Beach's amphitheater runs its next snake ambassador program on September 13, with another set for October 10.
- Anchorage Park keeps its free family programming running through the summer and hosts its own fishing tournament every year, open to anyone with a rod.
- The Village's broader events calendar, from Touch-a-Truck to the Links 5K Ghost Run to the Arts and Crafts Fall Festival, follows the same no-gate model the golf course set decades ago.
Why It's Worth Knowing
Palm Beach County has no shortage of championship golf, private marinas, and guarded beach access. What is harder to find is a Village where the marquee version of each one is owned by the town rather than a membership roster. North Palm Beach spent its centennial spring proving that its golf course was never really about golf. It was about who gets to use it, and the answer here has been everyone since 1962.
That is the Village residents actually live in day to day, long after the fireworks over the 18th green have faded. If you are trying to put a number on what that kind of public access is worth, whether it is a home near the country club or a condo close to Old Port Cove, the team at Opulence Group knows this stretch of the Intracoastal well enough to walk you through it. Let's Connect.
