Million Dollar Island | Vero Beach 32963 Feb 10,2022

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Covid claims 45 more lives here since Christmas

MY VERO

BY RAY MCNULTY

Starting to get hopeful about the Vero riverfront For the first time in what seems like years since the process began, I’m starting to believe I’ll live to see the so-called “Three Corners” property become the riverfront dining, social and recreational destination our community sorely lacks.

That’s saying plenty, given the Vero Beach City Council’s history of moving at the speed of erosion when it comes to making impactful decisions, particularly when they pertain to any type of meaningful development.

And, for that reason alone, I applaud the four City Council members who last week – urged on by a packed Council chamber – possessed the foresight, wisdom and courage to push forward with the project and approve a master plan that dares to dramatically enhance our quality of life.

BY LISA ZAHNER Staff Writer

BY STEVEN M. THOMAS Staff Writer

If Thurston Howell III ran aground on the Riomar Reef and paddled ashore with Gilligan and the Skipper, he would feel right at home on Vero’s barrier island these

days among residents who – even if they aren’t all multimillionaires like him – do mostly wake up in the morning in million-dollar houses.

“There is nothing in Central Beach, east or west of A1A, for under a million,” said Buzz MacWilliam, broker at

AMAC Alex MacWilliam, Inc., the oldest real estate agency on the island.

It was Jan. 27 and MacWilliam was sitting behind his desk in his office on Ocean Drive, looking at MLS data. “The lowest price is CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

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While the number of new COVID-19 infections reported to the Florida Department of Health declined another 41 percent last week, Indian River County is not coming out of the Omicron-variant surge unscathed. At least 45 local residents died of COVID since Christmas.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 11 Indian River County COVID-positive residents died between Jan. 30 and Feb. 6, on top of five deaths the previous week.

On average, one local COVID-positive resident has died every day since Dec. 25, bring the countywide death toll to 615, based upon Florida Department of Health reports CONTINUED ON PAGE 13

Sheriff Flowers hoping vague apology on Facebook will save his job Gold jewelry, exotic cars, luxury hotels figure own personal high standards.” in trial of caregivers for elderly island couple He later published the

BY RAY MCNULTY Staff Writer

statement on his personal “Sheriff Eric Flowers” Facebook page – but not on the “Indian River County Sheriff’s Office” Facebook page.

He did not face reporters at a news conference.

Flowers didn’t mention the affair in his statement, which

Five days after Vero Beach 32963 reported that Sheriff Eric Flowers had been caught having an extramarital affair, he issued an in-house memo to his 500-plus employees Monday in which he apologized to his wife, to the agency and to the community for “not living up to my February 10, 2022 News 1-14 Arts 49-56 Books 40-41 Dining 70-73 Editorial 38

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A staggering amount of evidence is expected to be used later this month against former home-health nursing assistant Chiquita LaShae McGee when she goes on trial for exploiting an elderly John’s

Island couple for 10 months in 2017.

Assistant State Attorney Lev Evans recently sent the court a list of allegedly fraudulent credit-card transactions – totaling more than $115,000 – that he intends to enter into evidence at trial.

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hotel would probably offer 150 to 200 rooms and banquet facilities. “We also heard concerns about the 99year lease, but developers need that type of commitment to get their financing.”

Another issue brought forth at last week’s City Council meeting was the fate of the now-idle power plant, affectionately known as “Big Blue,” and whether the unsightly 60-year-old building could be repurposed into a hotel.

It’s in the plan, but the ultimate decision rests with the developer.

“You’re still a few years away from seeing anything happening on that site – if the referendum passes,” Jeffries said. “I’m optimistic that it will, but we’d still have a lot of work to do before any type of groundbreaking.”

Any chance the riverfront will be open for business within 10 years?

“Oh, yeah,” Jeffries said. “If every-

People pack City Council chambers before a vote on the Three Corners riverfront project.

thing stays on track, you should see dirt moving in five years.”

That’s assuming future City Councils don’t get in the way.

City Council members serve twoyear terms, and the elections for the five seats are staggered, which means power can shift almost annually.

Jeffries, however, said support for the project has been “pretty consistent” throughout his four years here.

“It’s an exciting time,” Jeffries said.

“I like where we’re headed.”

But we’re not even halfway there.

There’s still plenty of time for something to go wrong, especially as we move through the next five years and we see new faces on the City Council, which has a long history of getting bogged down.

We can’t let that happen, and I don’t think we will – now that so many people agree Vero Beach needs a riverfront destination where we can dine and drink, stroll and shop, and enjoy meeting neighbors and newcomers.

I think the referendum will pass, the city will find the right developer and the riverfront will become something special.

At age 63, I think I’ll live to see it.

And hopefully, it will have a much better name by then. 

Million Dollar Island CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

$1,095,000 for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath on Indian River Drive and the highest price in Central Beach is $2,385,000 for a 4-bedroom, 3-bath on Gayfeather.”

And Central Beach is not an anomaly.

“The lowest price in Riomar is my

listing at 1971 Club Dr. at $2,345,000, which is basically lot value,” said Charlotte Terry, the top luxury agent at AMAC. “From there it jumps to $5.9 million, then $7.9 million and then up to $18 million for a property on the ocean.”

“I just checked, and there’s nothing in Castaway Cove for under a million,” said Kit Fields, a fourth-generation

Vero resident and AMAC agent who lives on Painted Bunting in Riomar.

Likewise, there are no single-family detached homes in The Moorings for under $1 million, and it goes without saying that price point is only a distant memory in John’s Island.

As of 9 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 7 there were only seven houses in the entire CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

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32963 area for under $1 million, according Zillow.com. They were priced from $699,000 for a little 950-square-foot house in Summerplace to $900,000 for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath on Anglers Lane in South Beach.

With inventory down to a one-month supply in Vero Beach, most of those remnant, under-a-million homes will likely be under contract by the time this article is published.

“The whole island is basically luxury

at this point,” said Dale Sorensen Jr., managing partner for Dale Sorensen Real Estate.

The shift to an exclusively $1-million-and-up housing market happened suddenly, in the first half of 2021. Prices had been rising steadily through the fall and winter of 2020 but early in the new year, an afterburner kicked in as cash buyers flooded the island market as part of the ongoing pandemic migration.

“That is when things really took off,” said MacWilliam.

“The first million-dollar sale [of a basic 3-bedroom, 2-bath house] in

Central Beach shows up in our MLS in April 2021,” said Fields. “It probably went under contract in late February or early March.”

Nowhere has the dramatic jump in values been more striking than in Central Beach.

A 20-block section that extends from Holy Cross Catholic Church in the south to Jaycee Park in the north, filling most of the space between the beach and the lagoon, Central Beach was the islands “affordable” section for decades, a middle-class haven filled with retirees and families living a breezy, seaside lifestyle side-by-side.

“When I got my real estate license in 1982, Central Beach houses were selling for $100,000 to $150,000,” said MacWilliam. “I bought my first home from my uncle in the 1980s for $120,000. It was on Ocean Drive on the cusp of Riomar and Central Beach. I put another $20,000 into remodeling it and had a house with a brand-new roof, new windows, new floors, new bathrooms, everything. That was my bachelor pad for three or four years.”

“Even 10 or 12 years ago, you could get a little house in Central Beach for $200,000,” said Richard Boga at Premier Estate Properties. “It might not have been in great condition, but you could get a house, and there was a lot to choose from at $300,000.”

Fields said that when she started in real estate in 2016, the average price in Central Beach was up to $500,000.

By the second half of 2021, that average had hot up to $949,000, according to MLS data provided by MacWilliam that shows Central Beach sales between July 1 and Dec. 31.

“I sold a house in Central Beach as the market was starting to accelerate but before it got really hot,” said Terry.

“It was a 2-bedroom, 2-bath, no pool, very neat, very tidy, with a 2-car garage, that went for $625,000.

“Six months later, when the new owners decided to sell, I told them the market had gone up and suggested $750,000 as a list price. They called back and said they wanted to list for $995,000 and we ended up getting $875,000 for it. That was my lesson that we were in a whole new world in terms of prices.”

Fields told a similar story about a house on Iris, east of A1A. “Cheryl Gerstner and I listed it in August 2020 and a young couple – he was doctor – bought it for just under $1 million. It was very outdated, and they planned to remodel to make a nice family home.”

When the couple got bids for renovation “the cost was so extreme that they put it back on the market for $1.2 million. It sold quickly for $1,000,000.”

All within a matter of weeks.

Besides the pandemic flight of buyers from congested urban areas to attractive small towns, and the advent of “work from anywhere,” the land-rush atmosphere in Central Beach is fueled by its walkability, according to island brokers.

“My Central Beach buyers love the village feel, being close to restaurants and shops and being able to walk down to Cardinal or Ocean and get their coffee in the morning,” said Fields.

“Being close to town has become much more popular in recent years,” said Terry, who sees some clients moving into Central Beach from gated communities on the island to be closer to the action.

“I have a couple of clients who lived in Windsor for many years, like 30 years,

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NEWS and at a certain point they were not playing golf anymore or using many of the facilities and didn’t want to keep paying all the fees, so they have moved to Central Beach to be close to everything” – the theater, museum, dog park, marina, banks and other servic-

es, as well as shopping and dining.

“Boomers like to walk and be in the thick of things. They are more active and athletic than their parents were,” she said.

“People are frantically buying up properties,” said Premier Estate Prop-

erties broker associate Cindy O’Dare.

“And they aren’t speculators or investors. They are people who are really moving here and establishing themselves in Vero Beach.”

The helium in island home prices is a challenge for those who want to

move here, but it is great for sellers – and for partners O’Dare and Boga.

Premier Estate Properties only sells homes priced at $1 million or more and 10 years ago that limited the partners to a select slice of the island marCONTINUED ON PAGE 6

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ket. Now they can list and sell pretty much any house on island.

“The whole time I have been here with Premier my bread and butter has been homes priced $1 million to $3 million,” said O’Dare. “Those are the listings Richard and I need that we can sell all day long, and there are more of those houses now.”

O’Dare called the sudden increase in island prices “incredible,” but said she is not shocked by million-dollar homes in Central Beach.

“I always thought we would go to a million and up in Vero because of what I’ve seen in Naples, which is one of our main competing markets. Buyers who look there often look here, too, and they have a little walkable residential area near their downtown very similar to Central Beach.

“I worked on some deals over there with Naples agents about seven years ago and learned a lot about the market. Teardowns were going for $1 million to $2 million then and I have watched prices go up, up, up to where those houses are now selling for $4 million or $5 million.”

With those kind of prices in Naples and little island homes near downtown Palm Beach even more expensive, O’Dare expects values in Central Beach and nearby neighborhoods to stay on an upward trajectory, as does her partner who recently purchased a home in Central Beach.

Boga, who has a house in Vero Isles, says he pulled the trigger on a 3-bedroom, 2-bath in $900,000s because he saw it as his last chance to get into the neighborhood for under a million in case he ever decides he wants to live in or build a home on the island.

Terry and Fields see it the same way.

“I don’t see our prices going down,” Terry said. “There is too much demand

Sheriff Flowers

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began with him writing that he was “publicly apologizing” to his wife, Rachel, and their family “for all the hurt, embarrassment and anger I caused.”

He went on to state that he would not allow his “personal life and these challenges” to affect his job performance, adding that he will remain focused on leading the law enforcement agency.

He then inferred that he and his wife were attempting to keep their marriage intact – a change from his position last week, when he had told supporters the couple was headed for divorce.

“Rachel and I both appreciate all of

for our extremely limited inventory for that to happen.”

Fields mentions a home on Riomar Drive that sold for $243,000 in 1989 and just resold in August for $2.2 million.

“The new owners are pouring money into it.” Fields said, suggesting that the renovations are a smart investment. “You really can’t over-improve in Riomar.”

“The Wall Street Journal and realtor.com analyze the 300 largest metropolitan areas across the country to highlight the housing markets poised to [most] benefit homeowners and investors,” according to a Jan. 26 article on marketwatch.com.

“The top emerging markets represent the places where home-price growth is expected to be stellar, while also having other attractive amenities,” and Vero Beach is among the top 20.

MacWilliam scoffs a little bit at the term “emerging.”

“People have been saying Vero Beach is an emerging market 30 years, ever since Windsor came out of the ground in 1989 and Prince Charles came a few times.

Then the Broadway star Bernadette Peters and Gloria Estefan came, and it was the same thing, ‘Oh, Vero Beach is emerging.’ We are always emerging! But, in fact, I think we have emerged!”

It would seem so, with steady coverage in the national real estate press, a continuing flood of high-end cash buyers from all over the country and multiple homes selling for more than $20 million in the past two years.

If he came ashore here, Thurston Howell – who Forbes Magazine identified in a 2006 list as one of the 15 richest fictional characters – would gravitate to the $20 million-and-up social set, but he would probably feel OK adjusting his ascot in a Central Beach house, too, on occasion, knowing that he was in a million-dollar neighborhood, even if his hosts didn’t belong to Newport Country Club or Oyster Bay Yacht Club like he and Lovey.  the messages we have received,” Flowers wrote, “but ask that you give us privacy as we work together on our marriage.”

He closed his statement by writing: “I am sorry to all the agency and community members who I have disappointed, and I will work hard to earn your trust and support going forward.”

Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Debbie Carson said Flowers had no plans to face reporters at a news conference, and that Flowers would not comment publicly beyond the statement posted on his personal Facebook page.

She said the statement was not posted on the Sheriff’s Office page because it was a “personal matter” and not agency business, adding that she CONTINUED ON PAGE 8