No Room for Doubt in West Palm

Palm Beach Post. West Palm Beach, Fla.: Apr 26, 2005

Ten years ago, West Palm Beach would have killed for a downtown hotel. A convention center hotel has been so hard to come by that the county is spending $10 million just for the land. Not two blocks away, amid rapidly rising apartment buildings, comes The Harrick. If the condo boom didn't convince you, The Harrick should: Downtown West Palm Beach has arrived.

Developer David Gostfrand is taking reservations for The Harrick, which is expected to open with 139 units in 2007. Even though investors can own individual rooms, The Harrick will operate as a hotel. Room owners who pay from $500,000 to $1 million for a furnished unit will split profits from hotel rentals with the developer.

In 1994, a year after the old Woolworth's store pulled out of Clematis - offering further proof of downtown's doom - West Palm Beach celebrated a lone pioneer. Developers received city subsidies and federal tax credits to build the 59-unit Ballet Villages, a modest apartment complex beside the railroad tracks amid boarded-up structures, weed-filled lots and razor-wire lined industrial buildings. Now those industrial buildings are selling, whole blocks are being leveled and massive upscale apartment buildings are rising.

Back to news stories