Beach Highland Homes for Sale

Living in Beach Highland

Get the compass right first, because the usual account of Beach Highland is turned around. Walton County's adopted neighborhood plan places the subdivision southwest of County Road 30-A, bordered by 30-A on the north and east, by the Topsail Hill State Preserve on the west, and by the Gulf of Mexico on the south. The park is the western neighbor, not a buffer between these streets and the water: the state's published boundary polygon ends about thirteen feet from the westernmost Beach Highland parcel line. The beach is this plat's own southern edge, and it has two county accesses on Highland Avenue, which the county chart lists as Bullard Road and Beach Highlands and records as having no parking at either. They serve people who are already here. Since 2008 the ground has answered to a county overlay, and it is unusually specific. Ordinance 2008-35 adopted the Beach Highland Neighborhood Plan, and Chapter 8 of the Land Development Code fixes the overlay's boundary as the subdivision recorded in Plat Book 3, Page 47, less Lot 1 of Block F, where a ten unit condominium called Journey's End was built in 1982. Inside that line the permitted uses are detached single-family houses, recreation facilities under a narrow condition, and accessory apartments as the code defines them. Multi-family and non-residential uses are prohibited, bed and breakfasts named among them, and manufactured homes are not permitted. Buildings may not exceed four stories. There is no maximum lot size and no cap on lot coverage, but there is a floor on the house: 1,700 square feet, and the count excludes carports, patios, porches and garages. Setbacks run 20 feet at the front, 15 at the rear, 5 at the side and 7.5 on a corner. Lots may be combined, never split, and the plan forbids reconfiguring lots in a way that would eliminate the beach access at Bullard Road and Highland Avenue. That code replaced something that had lapsed: the plan records that covenants established in January 1961 had limited the subdivision to single-family use and that they expired in 2001, which is the gap the neighborhood went to the county to close. Water appears twice. Stallworth Lake, one of the county's fifteen named coastal dune lakes, lies against the plat's western blocks, and the county's access table lists no public access point for it and records bird-watching as its use, while describing the trail's run of lake views along the county highway as beginning at Stallworth. On the other side, the mapped water's edge sits about 110 feet beyond the southernmost parcel line, with the dry beach in between, and the flood map turns right there: the southernmost parcel sampled returns Zone VE at a base flood elevation of 11 feet, while the parcels behind it return Zone X.

• Gulf of Mexico as the plat's southern border
• Topsail Hill Preserve against the western parcel line
• Two county beach accesses on Highland Avenue
• Stallworth Lake frontage on the western blocks