On September 8, 2026, the Boca Raton City Council approved a construction contract with Ric-Man International for the Old Floresta Infrastructure Upgrades Project. If you live on Alamanda Street, Oleander, Cardinal Avenue, or anywhere inside the boundary the city groups under Lake Floresta and Tunnison Palms, that vote is the reason crews will eventually be digging up your block. The house you own might be a 1926 Mizner original with a new roof and a renovated kitchen. The pipe carrying water to it has, in most cases, never been touched.
That gap between what residents have upgraded and the infrastructure beneath the street is the actual story here. The stucco, the barrel tile, the wrought iron, all of it has been maintained, restored, and in many cases rebuilt inside the historic district's design guidelines since 1990. The infrastructure underneath the street predates that designation by more than sixty years, and the $20 million project the city just put a contractor's name to is intended to address that gap at scale.
What the city actually approved
Resolution No. 112-2026 authorized the construction contract, but the scope was set months earlier. The city's Request for Proposal, Bid No. 2026-006-NP, described the work as a community improvement and upgrade project covering water, sewer, stormwater, sidewalk, and roadway systems across three areas the city treats as one physical zone: Lake Floresta, Old Floresta, and Tunnison Palms. The RFP carried an estimated budget of $20,000,000.
That budget figure explains why this isn't a repaving job. Repaving a neighborhood's worth of residential streets costs a fraction of that. A number this size means the work is happening below the asphalt first, and the road surface is being replaced as a consequence of what has to be dug up to get to the pipes.
The scope, as the city described it, includes:
- New water mains and meters
- New sewer force mains
- Stormwater system upgrades
- Enhanced sidewalks, including ADA improvements
- Repaved roads once the underground work is complete
Why three neighborhoods share one contract
If you live in Lake Floresta Park rather than the historic district itself, you might not think of your street as an Old Floresta project. The city's utility maps don't follow the same lines as its historic-district boundary. Old Floresta, Lake Floresta, and Tunnison Palms sit on overlapping and adjacent pipe networks that were built out around the same era, so the city bundles them into a single capital project rather than three smaller ones. The RFP language names all three explicitly, which means a resident on the Lake Floresta side of the line is inside the same construction footprint as a homeowner on a street with a 1926 date attached to the title.
This is also why the project falls under the city's Innovative Sustainable Infrastructure Program, known internally as iSIP. The program selects neighborhoods based on underground pipe material, age, stormwater risk, and sidewalk or ADA deficiencies, then works through them one at a time. Old Floresta and its neighbors are not the first stop. Boca Woods and Winfield Park went through the same process starting in February 2024, on a schedule the city estimated at fifteen months, with a note that weather could push the timeline. That precedent is the closest available reference point for how long construction of this kind tends to run once it starts, though the city has not yet published a block-by-block schedule for Old Floresta specifically.
The timeline that got here
The contract award in September didn't appear out of nowhere. It's the visible end of a process that's been moving for more than three years.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| February 2023 | State awards Boca Raton a $627,500 Resilient Florida grant for stormwater infrastructure in Old Floresta |
| January 26, 2026 | City holds virtual pre-bid conference for RFP 2026-006-NP |
| February 19, 2026 | Proposal deadline; six firms respond, including Ric-Man International, David Mancini and Sons, DP Development, Giannetti Contracting, Man-Con, and Southern Underground Industries |
| September 8, 2026 | City Council authorizes construction contract with Ric-Man International |
The 2023 grant was earmarked specifically for Old Floresta stormwater work as part of the same broader sustainable infrastructure push, which means the neighborhood has effectively been in the funding pipeline since before most residents would have noticed anything on a council agenda. The six-firm respondent list, which also included general engineering contractors with heavy civil and pipeline experience, gives a sense of the scale the city was soliciting for. This wasn't a small local paving contract. It drew regional civil infrastructure firms from Pompano Beach, Palm Springs, and Deerfield Beach.
What's actually under the street
Old Floresta became Boca Raton's first historic district in 1990, protecting the architecture that makes the neighborhood recognizable: the rough stucco, the barrel tile roofs, the narrow tree-lined streets named for flowering plants. That designation governs what happens above ground. It has never governed what happens below it, and the record of individual permit requests filed with the city's Historic Preservation Board shows a steady stream of pool additions, generator installations, driveway replacements, and exterior repairs on Old Floresta houses dated as early as 1924, alongside at least one infill house built as recently as 2023 inside the same historic boundary. Homeowners have been reinvesting in these properties continuously.
The street infrastructure has not kept the same pace. A $20 million project aimed at water mains, sewer force mains, and stormwater systems across three linked neighborhoods is the kind of spending that only happens when pipe age and failure risk have been flagged for years, which tracks with the 2023 grant and the iSIP program's own selection criteria of pipe material, age, and risk of failure.
What construction is likely to look like
Based on how the city has described the iSIP process elsewhere, work in Old Floresta, Lake Floresta, and Tunnison Palms will likely follow a similar sequence to what happened in Boca Woods and Winfield Park: underground utility replacement first, followed by stormwater upgrades, then sidewalk and ADA work, and finally road repaving once the trenching is done. The city has flagged weather as a factor that can shift timelines in past iSIP phases, which is worth keeping in mind given how much of this work involves open trenches during Florida's wet season.
The exact sequencing, block-by-block scheduling, and any temporary water service notices for Old Floresta specifically have not yet been published as of this writing. Residents watching for that level of detail should check the city's engineering and capital improvements pages directly, since that's where notices for prior iSIP phases, including temporary water modification windows, have been posted.
The other project on the same agenda
The same September 8 meeting that authorized the Old Floresta contract also approved a construction management amendment for the 32nd Street Seawall project and a renovation contract for the Hidden Valley Pump Station. None of those affect Old Floresta directly, but they're a reminder that this fall's council agendas have been unusually dense with capital infrastructure votes across the city, not just in this one neighborhood. Old Floresta's project happens to be the one with a contractor's name now attached and a question mark still hanging over exactly when the trucks arrive.
If you're weighing a move into Old Floresta, Lake Floresta, or Tunnison Palms and want to talk through what a project like this typically means for timing, resale positioning, or simply what to expect on your specific street, Jared Niles knows this neighborhood block by block and is glad to walk through it with you.
