Mizner's Preserve

Most gated communities give you one short loop and then you repeat it. Mizner's Preserve gives you more than three miles of it.

Seven acres of lakes with four fountains thread through the interior, and the walking and cycling route follows the water most of the way. Double sidewalks run throughout, which is a small decision at the drawing stage that turns out to matter every day. The distance is long enough for a real walk or a proper ride without anyone leaving the gate, which changes what the lakes are for. They stop being scenery viewed from a window and become the thing you move alongside every morning.

The gate is manned twenty-four hours a day, on the Delray side of the Boca Raton city line and a mile and a quarter from it, close enough to both cities that neither feels far. The map calls it Jog Road. Millionaire's Row is the local name for this stretch of communities.

Built in Two Waves

There are 210 houses across three villages: Cristal, built by Sterling Communities, and Le Chateau and Parc Chandon, both by Puder-Siegel Homes. They did not all arrive together. A hundred and seventy-four of the lots sold in 1999. The other thirty-six are Parc Chandon, which came afterwards and sold between 2000 and 2002, and it is the village listings name most often.

Parc Chandon holds four floor plans running from 3,966 to 5,884 square feet, in five and six bedrooms with ten-foot ceilings, arranged around a two-acre lake with an illuminated fountain. The plans come as single story, two story or courtyard, and the courtyard is the one worth understanding. It opens the middle of the house to an open-air center, which changes where the interior rooms meet outdoor space and gives a South Florida house a private outdoor room that is part of the floor plan rather than appended to the back of it.

Across the whole community the houses are Mediterranean and run from about 2,800 square feet to just under 6,000, on ground from about a sixth of an acre to just under half. The sections differ less than the listings imply, so the questions that actually separate two comparable listings here are which lot and how much has been updated since.

The Hours Within the Gates

A morning can start in the clubhouse fitness center and end on the route. The lighted tennis courts keep their own ground, and beyond them the pool is built for lengths rather than for lounging, with a separate children's pool and a spa alongside for everyone doing something slower.

The clubhouse also holds a party and reception room with a covered patio and a generous pool deck, which gives a gathering somewhere to happen without anyone hosting forty people in their own kitchen. A covered playground and tot lot and a fenced dog park sit past the athletic areas.

None of it asks for an equity membership. The clubhouse, the courts, the pools and the grounds come with the address.

A Quarter Mile South of Linton

The entrance is on the east side of Jog Road, a quarter of a mile south of Linton Boulevard and about a mile and a half north of Clint Moore Road. Bristol Pointe sits directly across Jog, a hundred and thirty-five yards away.

The location splits the difference between two downtowns. Town Center and Boca's shopping are about five and a half miles south. Atlantic Avenue in Delray, with its restaurants and nightlife, is closer to seven miles northeast, and the beach at the end of it about seven and a half. The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens is a mile and a quarter west, and the Turnpike is just beyond that, which puts both airports within a straightforward drive.