Old Florida Beach Homes for Sale

Living in Old Florida Beach

Old Florida Beach is one recorded plat rather than a district. St. Joe Paper Company filed it on 27 November 1991 at Plat Book 9, Page 17 of the Walton County public records, and its lots run to number 68 along Old Beach Road, Boardwalk Lane and Draper Lane, roughly 900 feet south of Scenic 30A on the ground between the Gulf and Draper Lake. Rear alleys serve much of it. The declaration hands the association the streets, the alleys, the retention and drainage areas, the pedestrian access easements and Lot 61 together with whatever stands on it. Those pedestrian easements are the beach arrangement: shown on the recorded plat, limited to owners, restricted to non-commercial activity for beach access only, with loitering barred and the right delegable to immediate family and to guests temporarily occupying a permanent structure on a lot. Building here is reviewed rather than improvised, and the detail is unusually specific for a plat this size. As recorded, the declaration seats a four person Architectural Review Committee chosen by the declarant, and no building, fence, wall, driveway, patio, pool, antenna or flagpole may be erected or altered, and no grading, excavation or tree removal begun, until it has passed on a site development plan, architectural plans and a landscape plan. It sets front yards at 15 feet and rear at 30, caps a garage footprint at 22 by 26 feet, requires porches across at least three quarters of the street front ground floor and at least 7 feet deep, allows metal or shingle roofing at a 4:12 minimum pitch, bars aluminum finished and jalousie windows and sliding doors, and rules out slab foundations. Lots must keep 15 percent of their area in existing native vegetation with a quarter of that in the front yard, except on waterfront lots carrying a control line or building restriction line, where the instrument expressly supersedes that requirement with 500 square feet of existing native vegetation in the street front yard and makes everything waterward of the line a total preservation zone open only to an approved dune walkover, a rule it ties to Choctawhatchee beach mouse habitat. County mapping adds one more line across the plat: 16 of its 70 county-addressed sites fall inside the mapped 300 foot protection zone around Draper Lake, where a land clearing permit comes before a shovel and armoring the shore is prohibited outright. There is no commerce inside the plat. The nearest public parking, restrooms and seasonal lifeguard are at the Gulfview Heights regional access, roughly 750 feet west of the middle of the plat and under 200 feet from its westernmost lots, and Gulf Place is about three quarters of a mile west along 30A, with Blue Mountain Beach about a mile and a quarter the other way.

• Pedestrian beach easements reserved to lot owners
• Association-held streets, alleys and common Lot 61
• Alley-served lots on a recorded 1991 plat
• Gulfview Heights regional access roughly 750 feet west