Landmark Palm Beach hotel sold for $15M
The landmarked Bradley Park Hotel — a fixture on Sunset Avenue since the boom years of the 1920s — has been sold for $15.375 million, according to a deed recorded Monday.
The new owner of the 32-room hotel at 280 Sunset Ave. is Boston-based New England Development, a statement released by the company confirmed. The company is developing plans for a major renovation and has taken over the day-to-day operations. All employees have been retained.
“We are very excited to be involved in this landmark project and look forward to enhancing the hotel in the future,” company President Douglass E. Karp said in the statement.
The sale closed April 27.
New England Development develops and manages shopping centers, retail and mixeduse developments that sometimes include a hotel component, according to its website. Karp serves as “asset manager” for the company’s Nantucket Island Resorts division that owns and manages a collection of luxury hotels, inns and retail establishments in Nantucket, Mass. Among them is a historic hotel, the Jared Coffin House, that dates to 1845.
New England Development is headed by its co-founder, Chair- man Stephen R. Karp, a seasonal Palm Beacher. The company was a partner with two other firms in developing the Palm Beach Outlets mall on the site of the old Palm Beach Mall in West Palm Beach. The mall opened on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard in February 2014, and in 2015 New England Developmentand Clarion Partners bought it for a reported $278 million.
Built in 1924, the Spanish-Mediterranean-style Bradley Park Hotel was sold by a company controlled by Gayla Sue Levin of Fort Lauderdale. She signed the deed as president of Bradley House Inc., the parent company of New Bradley House Ltd., the Fort Lauderdale-based entity that owned the property, state business records show.
The four-story hotel has a total of 28,668 square feet of space, inside and out, according to property records. With an open courtyard fronting Sunset Avenue, the building occupies a half-acre lot on the southeast corner of Bradley Place. The hotel has a 17-space parking lot.
The sale marks the second time in about two years that a historic hotel has sold in Palm Beach. In December 2016, the buildings that comprise The Colony — with 82 guest rooms and suites at 155 Hammon Ave. — sold for $12 million to the property’s then-mi-
Hotel
nority owner, the Wetenhall family. The Colony has been in business since 1947.
Real estate agent Chris Deitz of The Fite Group handled both sides of the off-market sale of the Bradley Park Hotel, he said. James Paine, a former Fite Group agent, also was involved on the seller’s side.
Also newly involved with the hotel is real estate investor Edward “Ned” Grace IV. Grace said he has a prior working relationship with New England Development, and he and his partners will be working on the hotel project. Grace and his partner, Damien Barr, also are part of the new ownership group that recently revamped Cucina, formerly known as Cucina dell’Arte, just around the corner from the hotel on Royal Poinciana Way. Grace is the son of Capital Grille founder and Palm Beacher Edward Grace III.
It’s unclear from property records when the seller’s ownership company took possession of the property or how much changed hands in that deal. Bradley House Inc. was incorporated in 1992 and has been filing annual reports with the state since at least 1994, state business records show.
Levin was listed as an officer in the 1995 annual report with several others, including her ex-husband, Fort Lauderdale businessman George G. Levin. They divorced in 2014, Broward County courthouse records show.
A federal jury in April 2015 found George Levin guilty of civil securities fraud related to a pair of investment funds linked in court documents to a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme orchestrated by disbarred Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein, who is serving 50 years in federal prison. An appeals court threw out one of the securities fraud claims against George Levin — which the Securities and Exchange Commission then withdrew — but affirmed the other violations and the jury verdict against him. George Levin did not face criminal charges related to the Ponzi scheme.
Gayla Levin has stated in court documents that she knew nothing about Rothstein’s criminal activity and that she and her husband were “victims” of his Ponzi scheme, which collapsed in 2009. As the plaintiff in a 2015 civil suit filed on her behalf against Bank of America, her complaint said she “may have suffered the largest loss of any individual victim” of the Ponzi scheme and her losses totaled “millions of dollars.” She ultimately voluntarily withdrew that suit.
Gayla Levin’s waterfront house on Bay Colony Road in Fort Lauderdale was listed in property records as the entity that owned the hotel in Palm Beach.
Two tenants occupy parts of the ground level of the Bradley Park Hotel. In 2012, Trevini Ristorante, a longtime Palm Beach Italian restaurant, moved from Worth Avenue to the west side of the building; during fair weather, it serves meals at tables in the courtyard. C’est Si Bon, a gourmet shop and caterer, occupies a Sunset Avenue storefront in the east part of the building.
Trevini co-owner Gianni Minervini said he expected to meet with the new owner. “We’re very happy here,” Minervini said, adding that he had been given no indication that the new owner would want to change his restaurant’s tenancy.
C’est Si Bon has announced plans to sell its business, but the owners hope to remain at the hotel for the foreseeable future, pending discussions with the new owner, said Arthur Voyer, brother of co-owner Aris Voyer.
The hotel was assigned a total market value of $4.6 million in the latest Palm Beach County tax rolls. Its taxable value was about $3.8 million, which generated $88,860 in total tax revenue for the county.
The hotel stands one street north of Royal Poinciana Way — the town’s original Main Street — in a historic area that is undergoing revitalization, thanks in part to the recent completion of the new Flagler Memorial Bridge and a renovation project at Bradley Park across the street from the hotel. The nearby Royal Poinciana Plaza shopping center was recently revamped with new tenants, while a major mixed-use development is under construction at the former Testa’s Restaurant property on the east end of Royal Poinciana Way.
Grace said the hotel is in a prime position for renovation to become a “toptier” hotel.
“What’s going on on Royal Poinciana Way is highly important to the project,” Grace said.
Khaled Hashem, managing director of hospitality at New England Development, echoed that view.
“Everything we do is first class,” he said. “The hotel has amazing potential — a landmarked building in a fantastic location.”
Promoted as an “all-suite” hotel, the property’s nightly room rates currently range from $159 for a deluxe room to $219 for a one-bedroom suite, according to a search of the property’s website. The website touts a “recent renovation” that combined “historic glamour and elegance with contemporary luxury.” The layout includes a two-bedroom penthouse and a three-bedroom penthouse.