Things to Do in Beverly Hills This Summer at Civic Circle

If you live in Beverly Hills, you already know Civic Circle is the address on your voter card, your kid's camp registration, and the parking lot you cut through to get to the library. What's easy to miss is how tightly four separate institutions are stacking their calendars there this summer. The Community Center, the Library, the Community Building, and the Rec Association pool are all inside a walkable loop, and between July and mid-August they're running programs, meetings, and now an early-voting site on schedules that overlap almost every weekday.

This is a rundown for people who already live here and want to know which door to walk through on which afternoon. No relocation pitch, no "discover" language. Just what's on, where, and when.

The Four Doors on Civic Circle

Every institution below is inside a short walk of the roundabout. If you've lived here a while, none of these addresses are new. What changes each summer is which one is the busiest on any given day.

The Rec Association's pool is one of the few in the area that's open right now. It closes each year around December and January when temperatures drop, then reopens for the warm months. If you moved here after the last cold snap, this is the summer to actually use it.

What's Actually on the Calendar

The four venues aren't sitting quietly through summer. A partial list of what's booked between now and the end of August:

• Summer Quest Critter Camp at the Central Ridge Community Center, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., $35, split into ages 5–7, 8–10, and 11–13. Registration runs through Citrus County Parks; the community center address is 77 Civic Circle.
• Adults Create at Central Ridge Library, July 31 from 10:30 a.m. to noon, a drop-in crafting session with materials provided. Registration required; the library's number is 352-746-6622.
• Happy Tails Youth Reading Program at the library, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., where kids read to registered therapy dogs. Free.
• Ridge Readers Book Club, the last Wednesday of each month at the Central Ridge Library.
• Early voting for the August 18 primary at both the Central Ridge Community Center and Central Ridge Library, Friday, August 7 through Saturday, August 15, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily including the weekend.

For anyone who registered a kid for a Parks & Rec camp back in May and hasn't checked in since, the county has been tentatively looking at early drop-off and late pick-up options to better fit family schedules. Worth a call to 352-527-7540 before the second half of the season if that would help.

The Horseshoe Pits Nobody Mentions

Here is the fact I'd stake this post on. The Central Ridge Community Center holds 24 regulation horseshoe pits, the largest set in Florida. Not a top ten. Not a regional distinction. The largest.

Twenty-four regulation pits at a community center in a Citrus County CDP of roughly ten thousand residents is the kind of number that only makes sense once you've seen a Saturday tournament here.

If you've lived in Beverly Hills for a decade and never wandered back behind the Center to look at them, this is the summer to do it. They sit alongside the tennis and pickleball courts, the shuffleboard, and the indoor amenities the Center runs year-round. On weekday mornings the pits are quiet. On tournament weekends the sound carries across Civic Circle.

Where People Eat After

The dining cluster that residents actually rotate through sits along North Lecanto Highway, a short drive from Civic Circle. A partial roll call, because generic references don't help anyone:

Bangkok Thai at 4025 N. Lecanto Hwy is the one out-of-town relatives ask about by name after their first visit. 220 Barbeque at 4493 N. Lecanto Hwy handles the smoked-meat slot. Los Magueyes Beverly Hills is the local outpost of Juan Carlos Jaime's Citrus County Mexican group, which also runs locations in Crystal River and Inverness at 1674 U.S. 41 North, so the menu is familiar if you've eaten at any of the sisters. Moschello's II handles Italian. Papa Willies Bar and Grill, Breakfast Station, World Fusion, Mariana's The Stinky Rose, and New England Pastry & Cafe round out the short list that appears again and again on Beverly Hills 34465 restaurant lists heading into 2026.

None of this is news to a long-time resident. What's useful is the pairing logic. A camp pickup at 2 p.m. followed by an early dinner at Breakfast Station or Bangkok Thai fits an afternoon that starts and ends within a few miles of Civic Circle. An evening library program followed by 220 Barbeque works the same way. The compactness is the point.

The August 18 Overlay

The one calendar item that's going to change foot traffic at Civic Circle this year is the primary.

Florida is a closed primary state, so voters generally can only vote in the primary contests of the party with which they are registered. The party change deadline is Monday, July 20. If you moved from a state with open primaries and haven't checked your registration since, that date matters more than election day itself.

Two other pieces of the primary are worth pinning to the fridge. Vote-by-Mail ballots go out on July 9, so if you requested one it should already be in your mailbox or arriving this week. And because of legislative redistricting, the Elections Office mailed new Voter Information Cards to all registered voters, reflecting polling precinct and polling location changes as well as the county's congressional district shift from District 12 to District 15. Beverly Hills residents whose precinct assignment changed will find it on that card. Verification is also available through the Precinct Finder at votecitrus.gov or by calling 352-564-7120.

For nine days in August, the Community Center parking lot and the Library parking lot will both be running as early-voting sites during the same hours the summer camp is dropping off and picking up. If you have a Critter Camp kid and you're planning to vote early, the smart move is to combine the trips rather than fight the lot twice.

What Ties It Together

The thesis is simple. Civic Circle is not four buildings that happen to share a roundabout. It's an operating system. Parks & Rec runs the camps and the pits. The library runs the programs and doubles as a polling site. The Community Building holds the civic meetings the Chronicle covers in its "On the Campaign Trail" column, including Nature Coast Republican Club meetings with candidates for the Board of County Commissioners. The Rec Association handles the pool and the ball fields.

Any given Beverly Hills weekday between now and Labor Day, at least two of those four are running something. If you organize your afternoon around Civic Circle instead of driving out to 44 or down to Crystal River, you'll spend less time in the car and more time actually seeing your neighbors. That's the version of summer here that visitors never see, and it's the version that makes the address worth the property tax bill.

Speaking of which. The county commissioners opened discussions this week on the 2026-27 budget, weighing whether to move forward with a property tax cut or preserve revenue as uncertainty looms over a potential statewide property tax referendum. Whatever that vote lands on, it's going to filter down into what the four venues on Civic Circle can afford to program next summer. Worth watching.

If you own a home in Beverly Hills and you're curious what it would be worth on today's market, or you're thinking about the next move within Citrus County, Tyler Ross knows the streets around Civic Circle as well as the ones out toward Black Diamond and Pine Ridge. Get Your Instant Home Valuation through the site, or reach out directly for a straightforward conversation about your options.