It Takes a Village

Jay and Joan McLaughlin turn The Village Shops into a destination with a new color palette, fresh landscaping, walkways and a French-inspired restaurant.

April 30, 2014

Melissa Karen Sances, Photography by Denise Ritchie,

The McLaughlins stand before several of the shops that await renovation. In the past year, they have flown back and forth from New York to Vero so often that their dog, Max, has become a “frequent flyer.”

Jay McLaughlin knows something about celebrity. The last time he was featured in a Vero Beach Magazine article in March 2010, we called him a “fashion king.” At the time, the New York-based fashion designer and high-end retail mogul was the “new” news in town thanks to his purchase and renovation of a Vero Beach home and the opening of J. McLaughlin, a women’s clothing store on Ocean Drive.

Now he is the “new” news in town thanks to his purchase and renovation of a “village.” In April of 2013, Jay and Joan McLaughlin bought The Village Shops, the quaint cluster of seven buildings that resembles a little village tucked beneath oaks on Highway A1A. Jay says, “As we came closer to retirement and thinking about what we wanted to do, I thought that this looked like something we could really sink our teeth into. Large reconstruction projects like this don’t scare Joan and me after 40 years of marriage. We’ve done a lot of renovations; we’ve built a lot of stores. We just had a good feeling that this was the right thing for us to do.”
Read the entire article in the May 2014 issue

This article appears in the May 2014 issue of Vero Beach Magazine.