The Mandarin Oriental Hotel and Residences in Boca Raton is expected to be completed some time in the first half of next year.
Once open in 2025, the project, at the corner of Federal Highway and Camino Real in downtown Boca Raton, will unveil a 164-room hotel and 85 luxury units, most of which have already sold.
Amenities will include a downtown golf and city club, restaurants and retail spots — the “kind of stores you find in Paris or Milan,” said Albert Piazza, the president of development for Penn-Florida Companies, the developer behind the project.
Piazza said he started designing the project in 2015. He said the project’s primary delay can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent supply constraints that followed.
“We’re part of the real world,” he said. “We were interrupted by the pandemic.”
He added: “We have what is going to be one of the most expensive hotels in the United States. We want make sure that when we deliver it, that the designs are in fact current.”
They did not want their designs to be dated, he said, which also spurred delays.
“If we’re going to be putting a billion-dollar project in the middle of Boca Raton, it better be the best thing that’s ever been done,” he said.
Elizabeth Cross, Penn-Florida’s vice president of marketing, emphasized that sentiment, saying they are taking time to ensure quality.
“It’s more important to us than timing,” she said.
The $1.5 billion-project also has been refinanced, which is “extremely complex,” Piazza said. Refinancing is just financing something with a new loan, sometimes with a lower interest rate.
“Because of the long-term nature of it, it’s typical and quite natural that the loan structure changes as the project moves forward,” he said. “The loans typically have a shorter time period than the overall construction of the project may take. So loans in their normal life cycle are modified as you go through or extended.”
Cross said the project is “fully capitalized,” and they “have ample funding” to finish it.
A Mandarin Oriental Hotel exists in Miami, but Piazza said it will be closed down soon for new construction, further placing pressure on the Boca Raton location to open its doors.
“The Mandarin is very anxious for us to get our hotel open because we’ll be opening here just about the time they’re closing the hotel down there,” he said. “So they’re looking at us being their footprint here in South Florida.”
The hotel is designed as a “ultra-luxury resort in of itself,” Piazza said, with features including Michelin-star restaurants, a prohibition-style bar, a ballroom, a “rooftop resort experience” with pools, a children’s activity center and a meditation garden.
The hotel will be one of 36 in 24 different countries, and the residences will be one of 10 worldwide, according to Penn-Florida.
Scott Gerow, the director of luxury sales for the CBG Luxury Team at Compass in Boca Raton, said people are excited to have the Mandarin brand associated with the city.
“I think it’s a great privilege to have them as part of the community,” Gerow said. “So many people in the city are excited to see the finished product.”