To say Revere Beach isn’t what it used to be wouldn’t be entirely accurate. There are still gorgeous views of the water — and plenty of regulars who look like they’ve spent their lives right there, soaking up as much sun as they possibly can.

These days, though, as they shoot the breeze, the old-timers have to talk a bit louder than they used to.

The sounds of construction are ubiquitous on this stretch of coastline just north of Boston, as a wave of new buildings spring up that look more like South Beach than the North Shore. Among them: Ocean 650, developed by the Boston firm Upton + Partners.

"We wanted it to feel like you’re at the beach, because you are," Budge Upton, one of the firm's principals, said. "So we did things like selecting certain colors. With the interior design, it’s the same thing; there’s a beach palate. Around the swimming pool, we have tall beach grass."

Ocean 650 also allows pets — there’s a dog-grooming room right on site — and those amenities are bringing a new kind of resident into a city long known for its grit.

"We’re 95 percent occupied," Upton said. "That group of millennials from, say, 24 to 36 is big."

Rents, according to one online listing, start at just under $2,000 per month.

If you’ve watched the news over the past few winters, though, it’s hard to not to wonder: what happens when the beach gets less bucolic? After all, when extreme weather hits, Revere Beach has shown a tendency to become inhospitable and occasionally impassible due to flooding.

What's more, the future could be even messier. In 2018, a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists projected that, in 2045, 1,105 Revere homes worth a collective $375 million could be at risk of chronic flooding, more than any other community in Massachusetts.

Asked about the threat from climate change, Upton said Ocean 650 is built for resilience.

"Most of the first floor is open parking," he said. "There’s a drainage swale at the back of the site, so if a 500- or 100-year storm were to hit, likely it would go right through the building, through the parking area, into the drainage ditch.

"No damage to the mechanical, electrical, plumbing equipment," he added, noting that those structures are raised off the ground.

Revere’s mayor, Brian Arrigo, strikes a similarly reassuring note.

"I’m confident that the renaissance we’re seeing in Revere will continue for decades into the future," Arrigo said.

For one thing, Arrigo said, Revere already has developers build for a so-called 25-year storm, while some other communities use 10-year storms as a benchmark.

In addition, he said, the city is taking other steps to improve coastal resiliency, like dredging a brackish, half-mile canal just behind the beach to improve its ability to handle future flooding.

"At the end of the day," he added, "we want to make sure the residents are protected."

Does all this optimism pass the smell test? Erika Spanger-Sigfried, who co-wrote the Union of Concerned Scientists report, said that while she can’t weigh in on specific developments, the biggest chronic-flooding threat in Revere — from rising sea levels and regular tidal action, as opposed to extreme-weather events — isn’t actually on the coast.

"It’s not so much the waterfront, not so much the oceanfront stretch, but really the areas that are developed around the backside," Spanger-Sigfried said, "the marshy areas."

But she also offered a major caveat.

"If a development is done thoughtfully, with the right elevation, the right defenses ... then those developments can be resilient to sea-level rise and storm surge in the near term," Spanger-Sigfired said. "Longer term, with the projections of sea-level rise over the course of this century, that’s a completely different question."

In other words, it may take decades, rather than years, to see if the new development along Revere Beach is really built to last.