The Bridges

The Bridges is staffed rather than merely built. A racquet program runs under its own director, the fitness center is open around the clock with group classes included, and the restaurant serves dinner rather than reheating it.

The clubhouse runs to more than 17,000 square feet. Beside it are a resort-style pool with cabanas and a whirlpool spa, a splash park, a wading pool and a shaded playground, and an air-conditioned indoor sport court for the hours when the Florida afternoon sends everyone inside.

The Houses

There are 591 of them across about 300 acres in eight recorded sections, built by GL Homes between 2012 and 2016, with most of the lots going in 2013 and 2014. They run one and two stories, roughly 2,400 to over 7,000 square feet, in three to six bedrooms with two to four car garages. The lots run from about a seventh of an acre to well over an acre, with the middle of the range close to a fifth.

That lot range is wider than it looks on paper, so two listings of the same interior size can sit on very different ground. Which section and which lot are the first questions worth asking here.

The Range Inside One Gate

The spread from the smallest plan to the largest is close to three to one, which is wide for one community. A household moving up or down in size can do it here without leaving the gate, and a good share of the resale demand inside The Bridges comes from The Bridges.

The lots move independently of the houses, so a modest house can sit on generous ground and a large one on a compact lot. Reading a listing here means reading both numbers rather than one.

Crossing the Water to Get In

The entrance is on Golden Gate Avenue off the east side of Lyons Road, and the drive in crosses water before it reaches the first house, which is where the community takes its name. Lakes run through the property rather than sitting at its edge.

Of the 300 acres, only about 144 sit under the houses. The rest is water, recreation ground and planting, so a little over half the community is ground that belongs to no single address. That is what the bridges are crossing.

There is no club to buy into and no equity membership. The clubhouse, the courts, the pools and the restaurant belong to the community, and what a household pays each month is an association fee rather than dues on top of one.

The eight recorded sections are worth knowing about before you shortlist anything. They were platted separately and they differ in lot size more than in house size, which is why the association fee runs as a range rather than one number. A listing's section tells you more about what you are buying than its square footage does.

The indoor sport court is the piece that gets overlooked. Air-conditioned, it turns the hottest part of a Florida afternoon from lost time into ordinary time, which matters more here than another few feet of pool deck would.

Where The Bridges Sits

Lyons Road runs north and south past the gate, with Seven Bridges directly across it. Delray Marketplace is about three miles north. Town Center at Boca Raton is close to eight miles south, downtown Delray about nine and a half miles east, and the beach a little over ten.