The Orlando Sentinel has a cool article on Vero Beach, a laid-back city by the sea. Here’s an excerpt:
The teens who skateboard along Ocean Drive still call this onetime citrus and ranching town “Zero Beach.” But don’t tell that to pop star Gloria Estefan.
Longtime owners of an Art Deco hotel on Miami Beach’s better-known Ocean Drive, Estefan and her husband, Emilio, just opened a “personal luxury resort,” Costa d’Este. It’s down the street from the new four-diamond Vero Beach Hotel & Club.
And don’t tell best-selling author Carl Hiaasen. He moved to this laid-back town of 18,000 three years ago for the Old Florida charm whose demise he mourns in his novels.
And certainly don’t tell Kathy Gelb and her husband, George. Like a lot of retirees, they scouted both Florida coasts before deciding on the state’s new “it” destination just 100 miles southeast of Orlando.
What made Vero Beach stand out is what it doesn’t have: traffic jams and high-rises that blot out the sun.
“That’s really what brought us here,” said Gelb, who had lived in Coral Gables for 25 years. “They have good zoning. They know how not to ruin a coastline. They wrote the book on it.”
Indeed, they did — more than 30 years ago. When two 13-story towers called The Village Spires opened up in the early 1970s, they sold like mad. But Mayor Thomas White remembers that city fathers looked at each other in dismay and said, “Ahh, we don’t want this in Vero Beach.”
The residents still don’t. They’ve imposed a three-story height restriction on houses — five stories for commercial property — and require variances be approved by public referendum.
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