A boat makes its way through the calm of Blue Bill Cove.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Frieda Squires

Island Park, a neighborhood on a peninsula in the northern end of Portsmouth, is probably best known to outsiders as the home of Flo’s Drive-In, a popular clam shack on Park Avenue, the main road.

The front windows at Flo’s look out onto a cement seawall bordering the Sakonnet River, and a sign on the front of the store telling customers that it closes for hurricanes is a clue that Island Park is in a storm-sensitive area.

Flo’s itself has been taken down by wild winds a few times since it opened in 1936, but it keeps coming back. Flo’s closes for the season at the end of October, but this unpretentious, beachy neighborhood is mainly populated by year-round residents.

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“I’d say it’s mostly 90-10 [year-round versus seasonal residents] at this point in time,” said Robert G. Driscoll, Portsmouth’s town administrator. Island Park is the most densely populated section of Portsmouth, Driscoll said.

“It’s an awesome family neighborhood,” said Lori Rinkel, who is from Middletown but has lived in Island Park since 1989. “We’re all so close.” Her husband, Michael, a contractor, built their home on a small parcel of land, about 5,000 square feet, that overlooks Blue Bill Cove; the land became available about the time they got married.

She said when she first moved to Island Park, “there were a lot of older people who had lived here forever,” and they were very welcoming. They would dig up bushes from their yards and give them as gifts for her new, bare yard, she said.

Today the Rinkels are established residents. They bought a nearby cottage in the neighborhood as an investment a few years ago, and today it is rented to architecture students from Roger Williams University. Michael Rinkel has also built several new houses in the neighborhood.

“We love it here,” Lori Rinkel said. “We’re not going anywhere.

“Anything goes here,” she added. “I would never want to live in a neighborhood where you couldn’t have a boat in your yard, or you couldn’t hang out your clothes to dry.”

Most of the house lots in Island Park are small, around 4,000 square feet, and most of the houses are smaller-sized cottages, bungalows and ranches. Neighborhood house prices are also relatively affordable, and start under $150,000 — well below those of condominiums in some of the newer, high-end developments in Portsmouth — most notably, Carnegie Abbey.

If Portsmouth is becoming gentrified, as condo developments like Ferry Landing, Vanderbilt Stables and Overlook Point proliferate, Island Park remains largely untouched by the trend.

There were 27 houses listed for sale in Island Park this month, and the least expensive had an asking price of $139,900, for a one-bedroom, one-bath cottage, built in 1938, with 596 square feet of living space. Three more houses were listed at prices under $200,000 — $175,000, $185,000 and $189,900. Ten houses are listed in the $200,000s and six more have prices in the $300,000s. The most expensive property has an asking price of $620,000, for a contemporary Colonial with 2,766 square feet of space, built in 1920 but modernized and updated.

“It’s one of the fewer places on the island that is still very affordable,” said Janie Aracil, a real estate agent with Keller Williams. Aracil said the “tranquil” area near Blue Bill Cove has “great sunsets” and is a popular spot.

“You can get waterfront from the mid-fours to the eights,” she said.

Many houses in Island Park have been renovated in recent years. “They’re fixing them up left and right,” Rinkel said.

Rinkel said that the oldest house in the neighborhood, the original Island Park farmhouse, at 187 Cedar Ave., which was built in 1887, is on the market.

cdunn@projo.com