At Ease
Indian River Colony Club, Viera’s first community, celebrates its 40th. anniversary this year. INDIAN RIVER COLONY CLUB PHOTOS
Military retirement community serves those who served
The robust activities calendar, which includes golf, pool exercise and bocce ball, is a major reason residents choose IRCC for their retirement living.
Forty years ago, the Wickham Road exit off Interstate 95 was surrounded by vast pastures. On the west side of the road, cows grazed where Viera Hospital, Urban Prime Restaurant and Trader Joe’s now stand. The east side was as equally unpopulated, but a retired Air Force general was about to change all that.
Brig. Gen. Charlie Briggs had retired from the U.S. Air Force and envisioned a community that would provide “service to those who served” — a military retirement enclave with amenities few others offered at the time. It would be gated, secure and neatly maintained; with reasonably priced housing and in-house recreational amenities; located close to healthcare, shopping and entertainment. The community was to be called Indian River Colony Club, aka “the place patriots call home.”
Maria Sonnenberg
Maria is a prolific writer and proofer for Space Coast Living and an adjunct professor at Florida Institute of Technology’s Nathan M. Bisk College of Business. When not writing, teaching or traveling, she can be found waging a one-woman war against her lawn and futilely attempting to maintain order among the chaos of a pack of extremely clueless wirehair dachshunds and an angst-driven basset hound.
