Communities
The barrier island, club by club
Barrier island communities, from John's Island to Central Beach, each with a guide and live inventory.
All communitiesBarrier island communities, from John's Island to Central Beach, each with a guide and live inventory.
All communities
Riomar is the barrier island's first neighborhood. Three Cleveland families bought 160 acres from the river to the sea in 1919, laid out a golf course, and built the first winter homes on the beach.
The name is Spanish shorthand for river to sea, and the original tract did run from the Indian River Lagoon to the Atlantic. Riomar was platted in 1919, before there was a bridge to the island, and its nine-hole course opened in 1920 as the only golf course between Daytona and Palm Beach. The neighborhood grew around the club: modest cottages at first, many without kitchens because everyone dined at the clubhouse, and later the substantial homes that line Riomar Drive, Painted Bunting Lane and the streets between A1A and the ocean.
Today Old Riomar is a non-gated neighborhood of roughly a hundred acres immediately south of Central Beach, defined by mature oaks, sea grape, and houses that range from 1920s originals to new construction on the same lots.
Riomar Country Club is the oldest private club on the Treasure Coast and one of the oldest in Florida, chartered in 1925 and celebrating its centennial alongside the city in 2019. Its eighteen-hole course fronts the ocean; the club also operates a beach club and tennis. Membership was restricted to Riomar homeowners until 1960 and is now open by invitation, with roughly 450 members. The 1929 Spanish Colonial clubhouse survives as the Lower School of Saint Edward's.
Riomar is a neighborhood of single-family homes on lots that are generous by island standards, with the golf course threaded through them. Prices start around $2 million for older cottages away from the water and rise past $10 million for oceanfront and course-front estates. There are few condominiums; the south end of Riomar blends into the oceanfront buildings of South Beach.
Ocean Drive and the village of Central Beach are a five-minute walk north. South Beach Park is a few blocks south, The Moorings a ten-minute drive, and downtown Vero Beach ten minutes over the Barber Bridge.
No. Old Riomar is an open neighborhood in the City of Vero Beach, one of the reasons it stays walkable to Ocean Drive.
Not since 1960. Membership is by invitation and separate from ownership.
The neighborhood dates to 1919. A number of original and 1920s homes remain, alongside renovated mid-century houses and new construction on original lots.
Ocean Drive, Humiston Park and South Beach Park on foot; the Vero Beach Museum of Art, Riverside Theatre and downtown within ten minutes.
