Serving the Village of Bal Harbour — an incorporated barrier-island municipality in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
Bal Harbour is a barrier-island Village of two very different worlds: the Ocean Front towers and the St. Regis along Collins Avenue, and behind them the private, gated single-family enclave of Bal Harbour Estates. It is one of Miami-Dade’s smallest and wealthiest municipalities, and it fences by its own rulebook — a five-foot residential cap measured not from your yard but from the centerline of the street, an Architectural Review Board that signs off before any permit issues, and hedges with no height limit at all. A Bal Harbour fence is won on design and paperwork before a post is set, and Allday Fence — a licensed specialty fence contractor whose scope covers fences, concrete walls, and columns — brings 18 years of experience filing in exactly these Miami-Dade offices.
Why a fence is genuinely different in Bal Harbour
Most of Miami-Dade runs on the county’s plain picture: six feet, keep chain-link behind the front building line, stay out of the corner sight line. Bal Harbour rewrites almost all of it in Chapter 21 (Zoning), Sec. 21-358 — Walls, fences and landscape plantings — and layers a design board on top. Three things make the Village its own animal.
First, the height number is lower and measured from an unusual place. In the single-family (R), multiple-family (RM), and Private Club (PC) districts, a wall or fence outside the building lines can’t exceed five feet above the elevation of the centerline of the adjoining street (Sec. 21-358(a)). That street-datum measurement — not five feet off your own grade — quietly changes the math on a raised, filled, or sloping lot, which describes a lot of Bal Harbour.
Second, the front street elevation is a design decision. In the R-2 district a front fence parallel to the front line is capped at two feet of opaque surface, with the balance up to five feet in open, non-opaque material and ARB-approved landscaping on the street side (Sec. 21-358(a)(1)–(2)). And every exterior fence runs the Architectural Review Board before a permit — a Certificate of Appropriateness first, building permit second.
Third, the Village is really two products. The Ocean Front (OF) condo-and-resort corridor along Collins runs a six-foot boundary line (Sec. 21-358(c)); the gated Bal Harbour Estates single-family enclave adds its own private covenants and a code-authorized perimeter wall up to ten feet (Sec. 21-358(e)). Get the district, the block, or the ARB read wrong and the project stalls before Building ever stamps it. That’s why we design to the Village code first and treat the height number as the last step, not the first.
Every Bal Harbour install starts with a property compliance report on the parcel so we know its zoning district and block, its permit history, any open permits, and whether it sits on the water or inside the gated section before a post hole is marked. We measure first, then we build.
Where we work in Bal Harbour
The Village is barely a third of a square mile, and it reads in two halves. Along the ocean, Collins Avenue (State Road A1A) carries the Ocean Front high-rises and the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort, with Bal Harbour Beach and the Haulover Cut at the north end. At the gateway sits Bal Harbour Shops, the luxury open-air retail center on 96th Street, and the relocated Church by the Sea at Bal Bay Drive and Park Drive. West of the shops, behind a guarded gate, is the private single-family heart of the Village — Bal Harbour Estates, with its landscaped private streets like Bal Bay Drive, Bal Cross Drive, Camden Drive, and Park Drive, a children’s park, and a private marina on the bay and Indian Creek side. The Village’s new Waterfront Park is rising at 96th Street and Bal Bay Drive. Those gated blocks — several named directly in the fence code (Blocks 1, 12, and 12a) — are where the five-foot cap, the seawall four-foot limit, and the community covenants all land at once. Allday builds to the Village code first, and to the waterfront and gated-community conditions that sit on top of it.
Fence permit rules in Bal Harbour
Everything below is the general framework for a residential fence, wall, or gate in the Village of Bal Harbour, drawn from the Village’s own Code of Ordinances — zoning Sec. 21-358 “Walls, fences and landscape plantings” (last amended by Ordinance No. 2021-637, effective April 20, 2021; the published code is current through Supplement No. 91), and from the Village’s official Building Department pages. Heights, materials, the front-elevation read, and setbacks vary by parcel, zoning district, block, waterfront condition, and ARB discretion — Allday Fence confirms the current Village code against your exact address before we quote, and we pull the permit. The height and structural figures below are quoted straight from the Village code and were re-verified against the official code on July 18, 2026; anything that turns on a parcel-specific reading or an unpublished department figure is stated in general terms until we confirm it for your exact address.
A permit is required, and ARB approval comes first. A fence, wall, or gate is a Village building permit, and because it changes the exterior it must clear the Architectural Review Board — a Certificate of Appropriateness issued and forwarded to the Building Official — before the Building Department reviews it. Applications are submitted in person at the Building Department at 655 96th Street.
Height — the Village’s caps (the headline difference):
- R (single-family), RM (multiple-family), and PC (Private Club) districts: no wall or fence outside the building lines higher than five feet above the elevation of the centerline of the adjoining street (Sec. 21-358(a)).
- R-2 front building line, parallel to the front property line: maximum two feet of opaque surface above grade; the balance up to the five-foot maximum must be non-opaque (wrought iron, aluminum, decorative open-weave concrete or clay, glass block), with supplemental ARB-approved landscaping on the street side; the wall must be decorative, finished on both sides, and compatible with the home (Sec. 21-358(a)(1)–(4)).
- Waterfront Blocks 1 and 12 (R-1/RM-4) and Block 12a (RM-5): nothing over four feet between the seawall and the front setback line (Sec. 21-358(b)).
- Ocean Front (OF) district: boundary wall or fence max six feet above the center of the adjoining street (Sec. 21-358(c)).
- Gated Residential Section perimeter wall: a perimeter wall around the gated section may run up to ten feet above the center of the adjoining street along the boundary the code describes — a community-perimeter allowance, not an individual-lot allowance (Sec. 21-358(e)).
- Ornamental features (entrances, fountains, flower bins and similar) may exceed the district wall height by up to three feet, limited to one per yard (two entrance gates allowed), set at least ten feet from any building, and never narrowing passage through a yard below 88 inches (Sec. 21-358(f)).
Concrete walls, columns and masonry — and why a wall is not just a taller fence. Allday Fence is a licensed specialty fence contractor, and our license covers any fence type plus concrete walls and concrete columns — which matters in Bal Harbour, because the Village code is written around walls as much as fences. The R-2 front rule’s two-foot opaque base is, in practice, a low finished CBS / concrete or stucco garden wall; the ornamental-feature allowance is what lets a decorative entrance, gate column or pillar rise above the district height (Sec. 21-358(f)); and the gated-section allowance is a masonry perimeter wall (Sec. 21-358(e)). A masonry or concrete wall — especially a taller one — generally carries more than a standard fence does: engineer-sealed structural detailing, a designed footing, and wind-load / product-approval documentation for the hurricane zone, with the exact trigger and detailing confirmed for your wall rather than assumed. Allday handles that engineering and the permit in-house, so the wall, its columns, and the paperwork all come from one licensed contractor. (We build fences, concrete walls, and columns — not retaining walls or structural building walls.)
Corner visibility (sight lines). Bal Harbour does not publish a numbered corner “safe-sight triangle” for fences the way the county code does. Visibility is instead protected by the five-foot residential cap measured from the street, and by the hedge rule’s requirement that plantings not interfere with traffic or visibility on the public rights-of-way (Sec. 21-358(g)). We confirm the exact corner and driveway sight-line expectation for your parcel with the Building Department before we set a corner post.
Setbacks. The code frames fence height “outside of the building lines,” so fence placement tracks the district’s building/setback lines rather than a single published fence offset; the R-2 front rule and the seawall four-foot rule are the explicit front/waterfront conditions. We confirm the fence-line placement against your district’s building lines and any seawall/bulkhead setback before layout.
Material and design — ARB-driven. Front R-2 walls must be decorative and finished on both sides; the Village’s design gate is the Architectural Review Board, which reads material, finish, height, and how the fence sits with the home and the street. The code does not publish a Village-wide chain-link prohibition inside Sec. 21-358, but a street-facing chain-link fence is unlikely to clear the ARB in a Village of this character — we confirm what the ARB will accept for your street rather than assume.
Hedges — an unusual Bal Harbour freedom. Outside the PC district, hedges have no height limitation as long as they are neatly trimmed and don’t block traffic or right-of-way visibility; in the PC district a hedge is held to the same limit as a wall (Sec. 21-358(g)). That makes a clipped hedge a real privacy tool in a five-foot-fence Village — we often pair a code-height fence with a hedge line.
Hurricane-zone product approval (all of Miami-Dade). Bal Harbour, like every municipality in the county, sits in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, and the Village has adopted the Florida Building Code, 8th Edition (2023). A manufactured aluminum, PVC, or vinyl fence system proves it meets wind load through a current Florida Product Approval or a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance (NOA), and masonry walls, columns, and gate posts need engineer-sealed structural and wind-load detailing. We carry the right product approval into the file.
Pool-barrier fences. When a fence doubles as the safety barrier for a pool, the statewide Florida Building Code residential pool-safety standard applies: a non-climbable barrier with a self-closing, self-latching gate and the latch set high out of a child’s reach, inspected before the pool can be used. On Bal Harbour’s waterfront lots this interacts with the four-foot seawall-to-setback limit on Blocks 1, 12, and 12a (Sec. 21-358(b)), so the barrier design and the water-side height rule have to be solved together. We design the barrier to pass FBC inspection on the first walk, and we confirm any Bal Harbour-specific pool-ordinance layer beyond the FBC for your parcel.
See our pool-code barrier fencing.
Survey. The Village’s building process contemplates a survey in the permit documents (final documents may include a final survey), and a fence permit needs the fence located against your property and building lines. We confirm the exact survey requirement and currency for a fence-only permit with the Building Department.
Fees and timeline. Bal Harbour publishes a Building Permits Fee Schedule (effective July 1, 2022), and fence fees are valuation-based rather than a flat figure — the exact fee, plus the ARB and building review turnaround, should be confirmed with the Building Department for your project. We do not quote a Village fee or a timeline we haven’t confirmed.
Framing line: the five-foot street-measured cap, the R-2 front-opacity read, the district and block that control your lot, the ARB design approval, and the pool-barrier and waterfront details vary by parcel — we confirm the current Bal Harbour code for your exact address before we quote, and we pull the permit.
The permitting authority — and who it is NOT
Bal Harbour permits through its own Building Department at Village Hall, 655 96th Street — not Miami-Dade County RER, which handles only unincorporated parcels. The Building Official is Eliezer Palacio. What makes the Village process distinct is the two-stage gate: a fence, wall, or gate first goes to the Architectural Review Board for a Certificate of Appropriateness, and only after that approval does the Building Department review the permit for code and structure. Applications are filed in person, with status and inspections tracked afterward through the Village’s Online Permit Center; some projects also run a concurrent Miami-Dade County (DERM) review, which the Village requests as one paper and one electronic set. We file both stages, work any corrections, walk the inspections, and close the permit against the property record.
The design and covenant layer
Bal Harbour doesn’t leave fence design to chance, and on the gated side it doesn’t leave it to one board either. The Architectural Review Board is a municipal design overlay — it decides whether the fence’s height, material, finish, and placement are appropriate to the home and the streetscape before any permit moves. On top of that, the private Bal Harbour Estates community carries its own recorded covenants and architectural approval, so a fence inside the gate answers to two design authorities, not one, and we build to the stricter. This is different from a routine HOA sign-off in the rest of the county: here the Village’s design board and the community’s covenant review can both touch the same fence. Before we design a Bal Harbour fence, we confirm the current Village standard for your street and whether the community’s covenant review applies to your address — so the drawings we file are already built to the tightest rule on your parcel.
How an Allday Bal Harbour project runs
- Property record first. Before we quote, we run a MyHausFax™ property compliance report on your parcel to surface permit history, open permits, the zoning district and block, and any seawall/waterfront or gated-section condition — so we’re designing against the real record, not a guess.
- Design to the Village read. The five-foot residential cap measured from the street (six feet in the Ocean Front district; four feet between a seawall and the front setback on the named blocks); the R-2 front elevation kept inside the two-foot-opaque rule with an open decorative top; a hedge line drawn in where extra privacy is wanted.
- ARB package first. Survey, elevations, material and finish samples, and the fence detail — assembled the way the Architectural Review Board expects — to earn the Certificate of Appropriateness.
- Building permit filed. The full submittal — survey, fence detail, product approval / NOA for the manufactured system, license and insurance — filed in person the way the Building Department expects, with any concurrent county (DERM) review carried alongside.
- Corrections cleared, then install. We answer ARB, building, and zoning comments, build to the approved plans, and walk the Village inspections, including the pool-barrier safety inspection where a pool is involved.
- Permit closed. Closed against the property record in writing — nothing left open to surface at a sale, a refinance, or a four-point inspection. If a fence, wall, or pool barrier is already up without a permit, our sister company Permit Solutions Services runs the after-the-fact / legalization path.
What Allday installs in Bal Harbour
Low open aluminum and decorative front-yard fencing sized to the Village’s five-foot street-measured cap and the R-2 two-foot opaque-base rule, CBS / concrete and stucco garden walls for that finished R-2 masonry base and low boundary walls, decorative concrete columns, pillars and gate posts built to the ornamental-feature allowance, pool-code barrier fencing built non-climbable to the FBC self-closing/self-latching standard, four-foot seawall-to-setback runs on the named waterfront blocks, hedge-paired privacy lines that use the Village’s no-height-limit hedge rule, gated entries and masonry perimeter runs, commercial and multi-family / Ocean Front association fencing and walls along the Collins Avenue corridor, and fence repair and storm restoration across the Village. Taller masonry and concrete walls are engineered, footed, and wind-load / product-approved by us before the permit is pulled. Every job is a permit-tied install — designed to the Village code, ARB-approved, product-approved for the hurricane zone, pulled, and finaled.
Also serving nearby in Miami-Dade County
Bal Harbour sits at the north end of the barrier-island corridor, beside two markets we work every week — each with its own building department and its own fence code:
- Surfside fence contractor — directly south, where design review and a lot-width front-yard height scale govern the fence, and chain-link, PVC, and vinyl are prohibited materials.
- Bay Harbor Islands fence contractor — across the water to the west, where a six-foot cap, a mandatory hedge planted with every fence, and a Design Review Board on walls drive the work.
Allday Fence is a licensed specialty fence contractor — fences, concrete walls, and columns — serving Miami-Dade County only. With 18 years of experience filing and finaling fence, wall, and column permits through these exact barrier-island building departments — including Bal Harbour’s Architectural Review Board and its five-foot street-measured cap — we build to the Village code, product-approve for the hurricane zone, and close every permit against the property record.
Reviewed by Victor L. Moreno, Chief Compliance Officer, before publish. This page is general guidance, not a code determination for any specific parcel — Allday Fence confirms the current Village of Bal Harbour code for your exact address before quoting. Allday Fence is the contractor of record (NOC / lien entity) on Village permits.