A house and a duplex, both 50 feet tall, planned on Boca’s undeveloped beach

Two residential structures that would be 50 feet tall are proposed on a pristine stretch of Boca Raton’s beach.

The two structures, a house and a duplex, would be built on land in an undeveloped area east of State Road A1A.

The proposed four-story duplex would be called Boca Beach House and would be built at 2600 North Ocean Boulevard. In November, a city environmental advisory board may review plans for the duplex, which would be 50 feet tall and would have more than 14,000 square feet of interior space.

The proposed 50-foot-tall house at 2500 North Ocean Boulevard would have 7,644 square feet of space, excluding space in a garage and 2,250 square feet of balcony space. The city council’s prior approval of the proposed house is set to expire at the end of 2019.

In 2015, four members of the Boca Raton City Council voted in favor a proposed variance that allowed an expansion of the width of the house. The only “no” vote was cast by Jeremy Rodgers, and since then, two women who campaigned against coastal construction have been elected to the city council.

At the request of the city administration, the Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District analyzed the cost to buy beach lots from private owners. Two miles of Boca Raton’s five-mile beach are privately owned, an the rest of the beach is publicly owned.

But the municipal beach and park district failed to negotiate deals with private owners of beach lots and later determined that acquiring the land through eminent domain was too expensive.

Appraisals of the lots at 2500 and 2600 North Ocean Boulevard put their combined value at $13.2 million.

The owner of the lot at 2500 North Ocean Boulevard is Natural Lands LLC, and the owner of 2600 North Ocean Boulevard is New Jersey-based Grand Bank National Association. [Sun-Sentinel] – Mike Seemuth