Reception area at the soon-to-come Nora Hotel. million or close to $ 1 million per key.
Born sees a customer mix of leisure customers traveling to South Florida for vacation and business travelers coming to the burgeoning business district that is being built.“ West Palm Beach is one of the few places in the U. S. where people are actually building and renting out office buildings— and they’ re renting out completely,” Born said.“ You read about so many urban centers that have enormous vacancy rates; West Palm Beach has none.”
Born also sees the hotel as a unique differentiator in a market crowded by franchised, branded hotels, what he called out as“ plain vanilla.”
“ You go around West Palm Beach and there’ s a Marriott, there’ s a Hilton, there’ s a Days Inn,” he said.“ We’ re going to be a community center akin to a lot of the things we’ ve done in New York, whether it’ s The Mercer Hotel in SoHo or The
Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca, where our hotels are situated on strategic corners that suddenly become neighborhood fixtures.”
The hotel also will have a certain degree of built-in support from the community and what’ s being phased in. Born noted there will be four blocks of retail— one- and two-story buildings— that will be on a cobblestone street immediately south of the hotel. Just west of the hotel will be two large residential rental buildings with about 800 units, and north of The Nora will be two to three condominium towers with about 250 units.
The groundbreaking of the hotel brought out the personages of West Palm, including the mayor and other public officials.“ Everybody was saying,‘ We’ re so looking forward to getting the cool kids on the block,’” Born said.
It’ s not the streets of New York, but you can’ t knock the hustle.
At the groundbreaking ceremony for The Nora Hotel, from left: Cathleen Ward, district commissioner for West Palm Beach; Timothy Mullen, managing member at Commercial Mortgage; Joe Furst, founder / managing principal of Place Projects; Ned Grace, co-founder / managing partner NDT Development; Richard Born, BD Hotels; Keith James, mayor of West Palm Beach; Timothy Hodes, managing director / head of hotel acquisitions, Wheelock Street Capital; Damien Barr, co-founder / managing partner, NDT Development; Keith Manning, director, Wheelock Street Capital.
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