West Palm Beach has a new front door. The Nora Hotel welcomed its first guests on Monday, October 19, a 201-room hotel planted in the middle of the $1 billion Nora District, where a row of century-old railway warehouses has been reworked into shops, restaurants, galleries and offices. The names behind it are New York names. BD Hotels, the company Richard Born and Ira Drukier founded in 1986, built the Hotel Chelsea, The Bowery Hotel and The Mercer. The Nora is the group’s first ground-up hotel outside New York, developed with Sean MacPherson alongside NDT Development, Place Projects and Wheelock Street Capital.
The import runs deeper than the owners. Pastis, the Parisian-style brasserie, holds the ground floor, and Stephen Starr, the restaurateur behind Le Coucou and Makoto, oversees the kitchens. Jack’s Bar anchors the lobby with retro glamour and cold martinis. A hotel that arrives with its own dining room and its own bar does not have to wait for the neighborhood to form around it. In the Nora’s case, it brought the neighborhood’s first crowd with it.
Palm Beach color, Gachot rooms
Christine and John Gachot designed the hotel as a reading of Spanish Colonial Revival and early Mediterranean Palm Beach, with nods to Henry Flagler and Addison Mizner, the two men who invented the town’s architecture a century ago. The exterior is bright, in the local green and pink. Inside, the mood darkens: pecky cypress woodwork, custom Gachot furniture, antiques, rattan closets in the guest rooms. The art was curated by The Madison Melle Agency, and the rooms were designed to feel collected rather than decorated. The hotel is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World.
A rooftop and a first for Florida
Upstairs, Lilly’s spreads across the roof in three connected parts: Lilly’s Pool for daytime, Bar Lilly for aperitifs at sunset, and Cafe Lilly, the full-service restaurant. Mama Hospitality, the group behind Mary Lou’s in West Palm Beach and Nantucket, runs the programming, and its founders Alex Melillo, Joe Cervasio and Topher Grubb are also opening Macs 44, an 80-seat performance salon, in the district.
The spa is the quiet headline. Sisley Paris has spas in New York, California and Arizona, and the Nora’s is its first in Florida: four treatment rooms, a co-ed steam room, a spa lounge and an outdoor terrace, built on the brand’s phyto-cosmetology, with facials, body scrubs and four kinds of massage. It is open daily, by reservation. Palm Beach season now has a new address to argue about, and the argument starts at the rooftop pool, under pink umbrellas, with the old railway warehouses spread out below.
The Social Register’s event directory tracks the season’s galas, benefits, and society evenings. Plan your next evening there.
