Palm Beach Shores / Riviera Beach — A Small Beach Town and the Port City Next Door

Two Places, One Slug: Why This Page Treats Them Separately

Start with the geography, because it explains everything else. Singer Island is a barrier island at the northern edge of Palm Beach County's coastline, separated from the Town of Palm Beach to the south by the Lake Worth Inlet (also called the Palm Beach Inlet) -- the deepwater channel that both pleasure boaters and the Port of Palm Beach's cargo and cruise ships use to reach the Atlantic. The island itself is split between two municipalities: Palm Beach Shores occupies its southern tip, while the northern two-thirds of the island falls within the City of Riviera Beach, whose main city limits then continue west across the Intracoastal Waterway onto the Florida mainland. Together, the island's year-round population (spanning both towns) runs to roughly 28,000 residents -- but that combined island figure blends a small, quiet beach town with the residential towers of a much larger city, which is exactly the kind of blending this page tries not to do.

Palm Beach Shores is the smaller, purely residential-and-resort half of that picture. The town was developed starting in 1947, when A. O. Edwards -- a railroad and hotel executive -- purchased 240 acres on Singer Island and began platting what's grown into today's town: a walkable grid of single-family streets running between the Atlantic beach on the east side and the Intracoastal on the west, with the Sailfish Marina Resort as its best-known landmark -- a real, currently operating marina, restaurant, and hotel complex on the Intracoastal side that runs a nightly sunset celebration and serves as a jumping-off point for offshore fishing charters and the short boat run to Peanut Island. With a 2020 Census population of 1,330, Palm Beach Shores is genuinely small -- its own police department and town government, but a footprint you can walk across in twenty minutes.

Riviera Beach is a different scale of place entirely. It's a larger, independently incorporated city whose jurisdiction covers a stretch of mainland waterfront along the Intracoastal plus the northern portion of Singer Island, and its defining economic asset is the Port of Palm Beach -- a genuine, diversified Florida seaport that is not a marketing phrase. The port handles over $7 billion in commodities and more than 2 million tons of cargo annually, ranking as Florida's fourth-busiest container port, while a dedicated 40,000-square-foot cruise terminal serves more than 350,000 passengers a year, largely on short Bahamas-bound sailings to Freeport and Grand Bahama Island operated by Margaritaville at Sea and Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line. The port and its tenants directly employ more than 2,850 people, making it one of Palm Beach County's larger employers -- a real, working economic engine sitting a short drive (or a short boat ride, across the Intracoastal) from Palm Beach Shores' quiet residential streets.

Riviera Beach's second defining story is Marina Village, the city's long-running, large-scale redevelopment of its municipal marina and adjacent waterfront into a mixed-use district of new residential, retail, and marina infrastructure. This is a genuine, substantial project tied to the city's Community Redevelopment Agency, not a speculative rendering -- but redevelopment on this scale in Riviera Beach has also had a genuinely contested history, including past eminent domain disputes with existing waterfront businesses during earlier phases of the city's downtown/marina redevelopment push. A buyer or investor should confirm the project's current build-out phase, unit inventory, and delivery timeline directly with the Riviera Beach CRA rather than relying on any secondhand description, including this one -- this page's real-cost and investment-outlook pages say more about how to weigh that uncertainty.

The practical upshot: if you're picturing a walk-to-the-beach condo or a small single-family home on a barrier island, you're picturing Palm Beach Shores. If you're picturing waterfront redevelopment upside tied to a working port city with a much larger tax base and a much bigger long-term growth story, you're picturing Riviera Beach. Both are real, both are covered honestly below, and neither should be assumed to be the other.

What There Is To Do, In Each Town

In Palm Beach Shores, life centers on the beach and the marina. The town's public beach access points face the open Atlantic on the island's east side, while the Sailfish Marina Resort on the west (Intracoastal) side anchors the town's dining and boating scene, with charter fishing boats, a waterfront restaurant, and a nightly sunset gathering that's become a genuine local tradition rather than a tourist-brochure invention. A short boat ride from the marina reaches Peanut Island, a Palm Beach County park popular for snorkeling, picnicking, and boat-up camping, and known for the Cold War-era Kennedy Bunker built during the JFK administration -- a real, publicly toured historic site, not folklore. Because the town is so small, most everyday shopping and additional dining happens a short drive south into the Town of Palm Beach or west into Riviera Beach and West Palm Beach.

Riviera Beach's attractions run in a different direction, toward the working waterfront and the wider city. The Port of Palm Beach itself, with its cruise terminal serving Bahamas-bound sailings, is the city's most visible landmark, and the ongoing Marina Village redevelopment is reshaping the municipal marina district into a larger mixed-use waterfront destination. The city's stretch of Singer Island beachfront, north of Palm Beach Shores, carries its own public beach access and a cluster of oceanfront condo towers and resort hotels distinct from the smaller-scale housing stock in Palm Beach Shores proper. Riviera Beach also sits close to the region's larger commercial and dining corridors along US-1 and PGA Boulevard, giving residents easy access to West Palm Beach and the broader Palm Beach County market without leaving the immediate area.