Pine Island Center sits where Pine Island Road meets Stringfellow Road, the crossroads of the island and the closest thing it has to a town centre. Around nineteen hundred people live here, a third of them over sixty-five, and about a quarter of the housing is seasonal.
It is the most practical place on the island, with the shops, the school and the community buildings. The roofing is a mix of older island stock, small commercial and newer post-Ian rebuild, all of it sitting on coral rock surrounded by salt water.