ABoca Raton’s Storied Resort Gets a High-Fashion Reboot
culture
June 03, 2022
Emerging from a $200M facelift, the Old Florida landmark, designed by Addison Mizner in 1926, is now a classic of a different color.
What was once the Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn and, more recently, the Waldorf Astoria-run Boca Raton Resort & Club wants you to know it’s not your grandparents’ hotel anymore.
For starters, it’s now simply—and confidently—The Boca Raton, sans the “resort and club.” The historic main building, called the Cloister, has spilled its 60s pink-lemonade exterior, reverting to a gleaming coastal white. Two classes of accommodations, the mid-century Bungalows and the all-suites Yacht Club—the latter reserved for 18+ guests only—showcase the latest upgrades. Along with the Beach Club, located across the Intracoastal from the main property, and the 1969-built tower (which remains pink), today’s Boca Raton offers five distinct hotel experiences within a singular resort.
It was all as much a groundbreaking as it was a reinvention, led by a litany of power players that reads like a who’s-who of the hospitality world. David Rockwell of Rockwell Design Group and GarciaStromberg oversaw the physical redesign, with critical historical input from the Boca Raton Historical Society. Mario Carbone’s acclaimed Major Food Group signed on for a food and beverage collaboration with four restaurant concepts on the property, including a Florida location of Sadelle’s, the upscale New York brunch institution. The award-winning 50,000-square-foot Spa Palmera was curated in partnership with Colin Cowie, who also designed a new lounge and a mezze spot, Marisol, at the Beach Club. King & Partners, the luxury branding agency that’s worked with Edition, NeueHouse, and celebrity-endorsed fashion labels like Skims and Brady, did the visual identity. EDSA, founded by noted landscape architect Edward Durell Stone, Jr., reinvigorated the lush, sprawling grounds. Michael Hostettler, the North American President of Relais & Châteaux who spearheaded the $145 million revival of Ocean House in Watch Hill, RI, signed on as the resort’s CEO.
Bankrolling the thole thing is Michael Dell’s MSD Partners, L.P. and Northview Hotel Group, which acquired The Boca Raton in 2019 for $875 million.
The Boca Raton today rekindles the passion and excitement of the visionary architect’s dream in today’s vernacular. While the renovations were considerable—$45 million went to the Cloister alone—Mizner’s sensibilities have endured, though many aspects of today’s structure stem from a 1930s expansion by Schultze & Weaver, the storied New York firm behind The Breakers, the Miami Biltmore in Coral Gables, and the Waldorf Astoria. Vintage wood-beamed ceilings, mosaics, and other details have been restored with fastidious attention. New French limestone floors and cast-iron light fixtures cast a hue of modernity that warms the space with sophistication.The remodeled Palm Court.
A hallmark of the project was reviving the Palm Court, the indoor-outdoor lobby bar in the building’s main courtyard, as a central gathering place. Gone are the royal blue cushions and weblike steel-and-glass canopy. Inside, craft cocktails are served from a backlit bar, resplendent with brass shelving and custom ombre peacock-colored fluted glass. Lantern mobiles circle steadfast columns in frozen orbit. The outside lounge surrounds a large fire pit, and there’s a full menu of elevated brasserie fare. Bim-boms of bossa nova bounce seductively by night.
Another highlight of the restaurant program is MB Supper Club, which offers an elevated take on the traditional continental cuisine you might well have eaten here with your grandparents—think Filet à Beef Wellington, Oysters Rockefeller, and Sole Meunière, with French Onion Soup to start—paired with a rotation of live musicians. (The “MB,” by the way, stands for Monkey Bar, the hotel’s tributary libation den for Johnnie Brown, Mizner’s exotic pet who once cruised the architect’s shoulders down Worth Avenue and rests in a marked grave beneath the Via Mizner courtyard). The Flamingo Grill riffs on a midcentury chophouse. Principessa Ristorante, a Lake Como-inspired Italian concept, opens late-Spring, with a Japanese spot to follow.
You won’t just want to check it all out—you’ll want to check in.
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