Not Your Grandparents’ West Palm Beach: The Ritz-Carlton Residences Arrives in Style

Finding a parking spot at The Royal Poinciana Plaza on a Friday afternoon required the patience of a saint—and, it turned out, a valet ticket. “Excuse me, that’s all valet,” an attendant called out as I circled. Of course it was. We wove past Saint Laurent, Cartier, and Hermès, the posh signs gleaming in the sun. I turned to my colleague and asked, “Poinciana, what’s that?”

“It’s the flowering tree,” she said, “the one with the bright orange and pink blossoms.”

“Ah,” I said. “You mean the Flamboyán.”

It was the name I knew from living in Puerto Rico. This place felt worlds away from the Palm Beach of my childhood—where we never, ever went to West Palm Beach. That was the “other side.”

Decades ago, my grandparents’ condo at The Dunedeck was our base for tea at The Breakers and awe-struck visits to Mizner Park in Boca. West Palm Beach, just across the lagoon, might as well have been another state. The old rivalry between the Island and the mainland was a fixed part of the social geography. Returning now, that map has been redrawn. The West Palm Beach I drove through hummed with a new energy: young professionals in Pura Vida gear, financial firm logos on gleaming towers, a sense of a chic metropolis rising at a breathtaking clip.

To understand this transformation, I went to meet someone with a front-row seat: Chris Leavitt, the broker for The Ritz-Carlton Residences, West Palm Beach. The velocity of the market was the first thing felt upon entering the sales gallery. In the sleek space at The Royal, the energy was one of urgent, focused activity. Broker Chris Leavitt was ready to dive in; there was no time to waste in a market moving this fast.

I placed a recorder on the table and jumped in with my first question: “From your front-row seat, achieving 60% pre-sales before the public gallery opens is an exceptional pace. What does this velocity tell you about the psychology of the ultra-luxury buyer here?”

“Our buyers are 80% from the Northeast,” he began. “They want to live in Florida because it’s gorgeous and sunny and happy. But West Palm Beach is not what it was even a year ago. It is a city that is growing before our eyes. It is going to be on the scale of a Dallas, Austin, Chicago, very, very soon.”

Major financial firms like Wells Fargo are establishing wealth management hubs here, drawing a wave of relocations. But Leavitt identified a more profound cultural shift. “I joined the Equinox on the Island,” he shared, noting he grew up visiting Palm Beach from Boston, now a long-time resident, “I don’t recognize anyone in the gym. They all look like new people.” The critical difference? “Many come to West Palm because it has everything they need. They’re not even thinking about coming over to Palm Beach Island. They are so young, so hip… they are just staying there.”

This is the seismic change. The historic trend of living across the bridge in West Palm Beach while socializing and shopping exclusively on the Island is reversing. West Palm Beach has become the destination itself. The Ritz-Carlton Residences, a 137-unit tower developed by Related Group and BH Group with architecture by Arquitectonica and interiors by Rockwell Group, is both a product of and a catalyst for this shift.

According to Leavitt, its pre-construction success hinges on three pillars. “Number one, we are very close to Palm Beach Island—you can walk there in less than 20 minutes. Two, we are one of the only true, globally recognized branded residences in West Palm Beach. To deliver the Ritz-Carlton brand on a silver platter is groundbreaking.” The third is a physical distinction that speaks to a new standard of luxury: “Every primary bedroom and living room has a direct, unimpeded eastern water view. From the second floor to the twenty-seventh. That doesn’t exist in other new product.”