Riviera Marketplace: Where Quality of Life is the Business Model

Bayamón/Guaynabo, PR — VRM Companies built its business thesis on enhancing lifestyle, and Riviera Marketplace is its clearest expression yet: a 21,000-square-foot lifestyle, social, service and entertainment concept nestled inside Riviera, the master-planned community of roughly 1,000 residential units straddling the Bayamón-Guaynabo line on Avenida Los Filtros (PR-177).

Riviera already anchors its lifestyle promise around its tennis center — now a full racket club, with four tennis, eight pickleball, three padel and six beach tennis courts, all lit, and a two-level clubhouse with a bar and grill — and a network of residential phases including Riviera Court, Riviera Village, Riviera Reserve, Riviera Parkview and its latest development, Riviera Sunset.

The Marketplace is the missing piece: a central plaza, directly connected to the tennis center and designed, in VRM’s own words, to be “the social heart” of the community — the setting for events, celebrations and the spontaneous moments that turn neighbors into a neighborhood.

Both the tennis center and the Marketplace are sited to work two ways at once: Riviera residents reach them on foot, directly from inside the community, while visitors from the surrounding region arrive to ample parking at both. The Marketplace will also offer valet parking for all customers.

Riviera Marketplace is scheduled to open in late 2026 with 12 locales, laid out so unit sizes can flex with demand. More than 75 percent of the space is already leased, and total investment, including tenant build-outs, exceeds $15 million.

The design itself is unconventional for Puerto Rico retail. Parking is not the first thing you see; people are. The parking sits behind the buildings, wrapping the rear of the center with quick access from every direction, yet it stays out of sight once you are in the plaza, inside a store, or seated on one of the wide covered terraces every tenant has. What you see instead is a large green lawn, with the racket club on the other side of it.

Gretchen Hernández is opening the newest location of GSKN, her four-year-old esthetics studio that started in a small room at home before landing in Condado. She didn’t wait to be invited. “I’m sure I was the first person who wrote in the moment they saw there was a single stone laid,” she says of reserving her Riviera space nearly two years before construction allowed it. “I never thought they’d give me the opportunity, because I know the vision they have there is huge.”

GSKN is targeting a September opening, fully operational by October, bringing its facials, lymphatic drainage and laser treatments to a client base she describes as walking distance from home.

Ask the people who already live at Riviera what the Marketplace means, and the answer isn’t measured in square footage—it’s about convenience and quality of life. “You have the option to go there with your family on a Friday after a hard week without driving far,” says attorney Alejandro Camporreale, who moved to Riviera with his family of five in 2024. “It rounds out the offering for the community.” He points to a supermarket, Costco and now Riviera Marketplace, all within walking distance or a one-minute drive.

The project also includes a parking structure that has eased a longstanding shortage of visitor parking for the surrounding residential complexes. For VRM, that’s precisely the advantage: Riviera Marketplace isn’t trying to create a customer base—it already has one. An affluent residential community lives right at its doorstep.

The tenant roster already signed reflects Riviera Marketplace’s positioning as a destination for elevated everyday living. Confirmed tenants include Casa Yoga, Apex Chiropractic, GSKN, Gorbea Facial Plastic Surgery, Entre Humos, La Santurcina, the acclaimed Santurce restaurant known for its artisanal pizzas, creative cocktails and neighborhood-inspired menu, and 5 de Mayo, a contemporary Mexican restaurant.

The mix was chosen deliberately. Most of the center is built around staying a while: coffee, lunch, dinner, or simply somewhere to sit and unwind. The rest covers the everyday services modern families actually use, close to home. Both are aimed at Riviera households and at the surrounding communities in the broader region.

Enjoying a Cigar Lounge Vibe

There is a particular kind of silence that happens inside a cigar lounge, and it is never really silence at all. It’s the low hum of ice against glass, the crackle of a lighter, the pause before someone asks a stranger a real question.

A retired engineering professor sits down next to a CEO who left the office twenty minutes ago. Neither one planned to talk to the other. An hour later, they’re deep into a conversation about life, about the market, about what they’d do differently if they started over. Nobody is checking the time.

“Nobody looks for a cigar because it’s something they’re going to smoke in five minutes, like a cigarette,” says Cándido Alfonso Bajos, founder of Entre Humos. “Cigar smokers know they’re going to spend time enjoying that cigar, minimally an hour. And during that hour, either you’re sitting in silence with your thoughts, or you’re going to engage with other people.”

That hour, he says, is where deals get discussed, where philosophies get debated, where neighbors become friends. “It really slows down time and gives the opportunity for people to mingle.”  That is precisely the atmosphere VRM set out to create at Riviera Marketplace.

Entre Humos is opening its third location — and its very first franchise location — inside the Marketplace. “Riviera for us is a very special location,” Alfonso says, “because it’s going to be a very community-centric shopping center. It’s literally a mall surrounded by residences. It’s going to be where people are most likely coming after work to wind down… the epitome of community living and community sharing.”

The space, about 1,800 square feet with an outdoor patio, will carry the brand’s full portfolio of exclusive distribution partners — Davidoff, Oliva, Aladino, Cavalier, La Flor Dominicana, Arturo Fuente, Dominican Cohiba — alongside a food collaboration with another marketplace tenant, open seven days a week starting at 10 a.m.

The bet VRM is making is less about retail exposure and more about something harder to manufacture: an affluent, walkable community that’s already primed to linger. As Alfonso puts it, describing what happens inside his lounge but just as easily describing what VRM is building around it — “It’s going to allow the community to have their time… there’s a lot of networking that happens” in spaces designed to make people stay.

Editor’s note: Caribbean Business is published by Vision News Media, in which VRM Companies, the developer of Riviera Marketplace, holds an ownership interest.

Riviera Marketplace: Where Quality of Life is the Business Model

Bajante: Between Bayamón and Guaynabo, Riviera Marketplace is turning a residential community of roughly 1,000 homes into a destination, and commercial development into a lifestyle enhancer for the broader region.

Bayamón/Guaynabo, PR — VRM Companies built its business thesis on enhancing lifestyle, and Riviera Marketplace is its clearest expression yet: a 21,000-square-foot lifestyle, social, service and entertainment concept nestled inside Riviera, the master-planned community of roughly 1,000 residential units straddling the Bayamón-Guaynabo line on Avenida Los Filtros (PR-177). Riviera already anchors its lifestyle promise around its tennis center — now a full racket club, with four tennis, eight pickleball, three padel and six beach tennis courts, all lit, and a two-level clubhouse with a bar and grill — and a network of residential phases including Riviera Court, Riviera Village, Riviera Reserve, Riviera Parkview and its latest development, Riviera Sunset. The Marketplace is the missing piece: a central plaza, directly connected to the tennis center and designed, in VRM’s own words, to be “the social heart” of the community — the setting for events, celebrations and the spontaneous moments that turn neighbors into a neighborhood. Both the tennis center and the Marketplace are sited to work two ways at once: Riviera residents reach them on foot, directly from inside the community, while visitors from the surrounding region arrive to ample parking at both. The Marketplace will also offer valet parking for all customers.

Riviera Marketplace is scheduled to open in late 2026 with 12 locales, laid out so unit sizes can flex with demand. More than 75 percent of the space is already leased, and total investment, including tenant build-outs, exceeds $15 million.

The design itself is unconventional for Puerto Rico retail. Parking is not the first thing you see; people are. The parking sits behind the buildings, wrapping the rear of the center with quick access from every direction, yet it stays out of sight once you are in the plaza, inside a store, or seated on one of the wide covered terraces every tenant has. What you see instead is a large green lawn, with the racket club on the other side of it.

Gretchen Hernández is opening the newest location of GSKN, her four-year-old esthetics studio that started in a small room at home before landing in Condado. She didn’t wait to be invited. “I’m sure I was the first person who wrote in the moment they saw there was a single stone laid,” she says of reserving her Riviera space nearly two years before construction allowed it. “I never thought they’d give me the opportunity, because I know the vision they have there is huge.” GSKN is targeting a September opening, fully operational by October, bringing its facials, lymphatic drainage and laser treatments to a client base she describes as walking distance from home.

Ask the people who already live at Riviera what the Marketplace means, and the answer isn’t measured in square footage—it’s about convenience and quality of life. “You have the option to go there with your family on a Friday after a hard week without driving far,” says attorney Alejandro Camporreale, who moved to Riviera with his family of five in 2024. “It rounds out the offering for the community.” He points to a supermarket, Costco and now Riviera Marketplace, all within walking distance or a one-minute drive. The project also includes a parking structure that has eased a longstanding shortage of visitor parking for the surrounding residential complexes. For VRM, that’s precisely the advantage: Riviera Marketplace isn’t trying to create a customer base—it already has one. An affluent residential community lives right at its doorstep.

The tenant roster already signed reflects Riviera Marketplace’s positioning as a destination for elevated everyday living. Confirmed tenants include Casa Yoga, Apex Chiropractic, GSKN, Gorbea Facial Plastic Surgery, Entre Humos, La Santurcina, the acclaimed Santurce restaurant known for its artisanal pizzas, creative cocktails and neighborhood-inspired menu, and 5 de Mayo, a contemporary Mexican restaurant. The mix was chosen deliberately. Most of the center is built around staying a while: coffee, lunch, dinner, or simply somewhere to sit and unwind. The rest covers the everyday services modern families actually use, close to home. Both are aimed at Riviera households and at the surrounding communities in the broader region.

There is a particular kind of silence that happens inside a cigar lounge, and it is never really silence at all. It’s the low hum of ice against glass, the crackle of a lighter, the pause before someone asks a stranger a real question. A retired engineering professorsits down next to a CEO who left the office twenty minutes ago. Neither one planned to talk to the other. An hour later, they’re deep into a conversation about life, about the market, about what they’d do differently if they started over. Nobody is checking the time.

“Nobody looks for a cigar because it’s something they’re going to smoke in five minutes, like a cigarette,” says Cándido Alfonso Bajos, founder of Entre Humos. “Cigar smokers know they’re going to spend time enjoying that cigar, minimally an hour. And during that hour, either you’re sitting in silence with your thoughts, or you’re going to engage with other people.” That hour, he says, is where deals get discussed, where philosophies get debated, where neighbors become friends. “It really slows down time and gives the opportunity for people to mingle.”  That is precisely the atmosphere VRM set out to create at Riviera Marketplace.

Entre Humos is opening its third location — and its very first franchise location — inside the Marketplace. “Riviera for us is a very special location,” Alfonso says, “because it’s going to be a very community-centric shopping center. It’s literally a mall surrounded by residences. It’s going to be where people are most likely coming after work to wind down… the epitome of community living and community sharing.” The space, about 1,800 square feet with an outdoor patio, will carry the brand’s full portfolio of exclusive distribution partners — Davidoff, Oliva, Aladino, Cavalier, La Flor Dominicana, Arturo Fuente, Dominican Cohiba — alongside a food collaboration with another marketplace tenant, open seven days a week starting at 10 a.m.

The bet VRM is making is less about retail exposure and more about something harder to manufacture: an affluent, walkable community that’s already primed to linger. As Alfonso puts it, describing what happens inside his lounge but just as easily describing what VRM is building around it — “It’s going to allow the community to have their time… there’s a lot of networking that happens” in spaces designed to make people stay.

Editor’s note: Caribbean Business is published by Vision News Media, in which VRM Companies, the developer of Riviera Marketplace, holds an ownership interest.