The Village Council voted Thursday to back a $6,263,700 state appropriation for Phase 1 of the Tequesta Park master plan: new courts, a new dog park, a new 300-foot baseball field and the infrastructure underneath all of it. It is the first of three phases that together carry close to $19 million in estimated construction costs.
Tequesta is going back to Tallahassee, this time as the park's owner.
The Village Council adopted Resolution 23-26 on Thursday night, formally supporting a state legislative appropriation of up to $6,263,700 in the 2027-28 fiscal year to fund Phase 1 of the Tequesta Park Master Plan. The vote was by voice, with no dissent heard. The resolution now goes to the Palm Beach County Legislative Delegation, the Florida House Budget Conference Committee and the Village's lobbyist.
It is not money in hand. An appropriation still has to survive the legislative session and the governor's veto pen, and the resolution itself is written partly as an argument for exactly that, laying out the rationale to keep the funding alive without a veto. The Village has supported appropriation requests for Tequesta Park in each of the past three sessions; what is different now is that, for the first time, the park belongs to Tequesta.
The park the Village just took ownership of
Tequesta Park sits on County Line Road, physically inside Martin County, and serves families from both Martin County and northern Palm Beach County. The State of Florida owned it for decades while the Village ran and maintained it under a long-term lease. This year the state deeded the park to the Village, with a restriction that its use stay in active and passive recreation: organized youth and adult baseball and basketball, nature trails, and the like.
The master plan itself dates to 2023, when a resident-led coalition helped the Council and staff build it, and the Council adopted it. Anyone who has used the park knows why: the three baseball fields have slipped to practice-only condition, and apart from the tennis and pickleball courts and the dog park, most of the park has seen little investment in years.
What Phase 1 builds
Rather than starting with the family recreation area as originally drawn, the Village re-sequenced the phases so the first money produces things residents can use right away. Phase 1, priced at exactly the $6,263,700 being requested in Kimley-Horn's preliminary cost estimate, covers:
- Pickleball and tennis courts, and basketball courts
- The dog park
- A new 300-foot baseball field (the existing field stays open during construction and gets no work in this phase)
- Parking expansion and the maintenance building
- The unglamorous essentials underneath: water and sewer service, storm drainage and a detention pond, lighting, landscaping and irrigation
During construction there would be a temporary access path, a gravel parking area and a staging area, with the existing restroom and pathway kept available.
The other $12.7 million
Phase 1 is less than a third of the vision. Phase 2, estimated at about $7.36 million, brings the playgrounds, a splash pad, sand volleyball, a large pavilion, a new restroom building and the finished parking lot. Phase 3, about $5.37 million, adds a multi-use field, a second, 225-foot baseball field, batting cages, a concessions building and an improved walking trail. Added together, the three phase estimates come to roughly $19 million, and the Village is candid that Phases 2 and 3 depend on future grants and appropriations and could land several years apart.
For scale, this is a village of about 6,000 people taking on a regional park rebuild. That is precisely the case the resolution makes to the Legislature: Tequesta now owns a park that serves two counties, and Phase 1 is the piece that gets residents back onto new courts and a new field first.
The appropriations process runs through the 2027 legislative session, with funding, if approved, in the state budget for the fiscal year starting July 1, 2027. Jupiter Daily will follow the request as it moves.
