Saturnia By The Sea

Twelve three-story townhouses make up the whole of Saturnia By The Sea. Twelve front doors share one address, 921 Osceola Drive, and the beach is about two hundred yards east across South Ocean Boulevard.

Back on Osceola Drive, a hedge draws the property inward around a court paved in brick. Pale stucco rises beneath barrel-tile roofs, while dark green scalloped awnings sit above the balcony doors. Wrought-iron Juliet balconies project from stone brackets, and small bands of diamond-patterned tile appear between the floors, breaking the broad fields of pale stucco. As you follow the brick paving, each detail arrives in turn.

Built Upward, Not Outward

The townhouses were completed in 1999. Every home has an entrance of its own and rises through three stories, and the private elevator links the attached garage, the living spaces and the upper level without ever opening onto a shared corridor. That is the distinction worth holding onto. This is a house with an elevator in it, not an apartment in a building that has one.

All of that fits on a compact coastal lot. The ground under each house runs from about 1,642 square feet to 2,518, which is why the plan goes up rather than across, with the open porch facing outward and the living levels stacked above it.

The townhouses run 3,376 to 3,592 total square feet across three floor plans, in three bedrooms and three baths. One plan carries a balcony. Half the residences have a walled courtyard with an in-ground pool in it.

What Ownership Actually Is Here

These are fee-simple townhouses, so what an owner holds is the townhouse and the ground under it rather than a share of a corporation. There is no club, no membership and no amenity program of any kind. The association looks after the grounds and the buildings, and a community of twelve carries that between twelve households rather than spreading it across hundreds.

A small community concentrates the ordinary decisions. Twelve owners agree on the roof, the paint and the landscaping, and every one of them is on the same brick court looking at the result. The shared ground itself comes to a little over a third of an acre, which is the court, the hedge and the planting around the buildings and nothing more.

Where It Sits, and Which Saturnia This Is

Saturnia By The Sea stands inside the Boca Raton city limits on Osceola Drive, a block off the ocean road. South Ocean Boulevard, State Road A1A, runs between the community and the oceanfront buildings that face the sand beyond it, and the sand itself is about two hundred yards from the front door.

Everything else in Boca is close from here because the address is already east. Royal Palm Place is about two and a third miles north, Mizner Park and downtown Boca a little over two and a half, and the Boca Raton airport just over six. Town Center and the shopping on Glades Road are about six and three quarters west, which is the one direction that takes any real driving.

One thing worth clearing up before a search sends you to the wrong place. There is another Saturnia in west Boca Raton, several miles inland and entirely unrelated to this one. Twelve townhouses on Osceola Drive is this community, complete.