Florida Is Getting Its Own Baha Mar-Style Mega-Resort in Boca Raton
The 356-acre resort complex previously known as the Boca Resort is getting a total overhaul, and the result is unlike anything else in the region—unless you include the Bahamas.
Source: The Boca Raton
On a Wednesday morning in late July, Daniel Hostettler looks out his second-floor office window to watch the demolition of the Boca Raton Resort and Club’s iconic porte cochere, an oval asphalt entryway with an Italianite fountain and soaring palm trees. Besides the Breakers a few miles north in Palm Beach, the currently closed building is the closest thing South Florida has to a grand dame, although these days it’s adorned with dump trucks and bricklayers rather than Aston Martins and Maseratis.
Hostettler is new on the scene; when we speak it’s his 90th day in sunny Boca Raton. But his job as the hotel’s president is to transform the 356-acre architectural gem, previously a Waldorf Astoria, into something resembling a South Florida Baha Mar, a $4 billion mega-resort in the Bahamas. He has the chops to do so: He hails from the Ocean House Management Collection, where he previously managed a handful of properties, including one of four Forbes Triple Five Star hotels in the U.S., the Ocean House in Rhode Island.