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.

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