Four years ago, WS Development stood in front of the Royal Poinciana Plaza and announced one project with two halves. Half was a restaurant, the only spot on the island with a direct Intracoastal address. Half was a theater, the long-dark Royal Poinciana Playhouse, reborn as a cultural arts center with up to 400 seats and a name that still makes longtime residents go quiet for a second. The announcement described the restaurant and theater together. By September 2026, the restaurant had opened, while the Playhouse had not reopened.
Tutto Mare opened in early January 2026 inside the Royal Poinciana Plaza, and it is exactly the intracoastal restaurant that 2022 press release described: the only direct waterfront dining address on the plaza's footprint, run by Gabby Karan de Felice, whose Hamptons restaurant Tutto il Giorno gave her the résumé to open a sibling concept here. If you've been waiting since that groundbreaking announcement for the town's promised Intracoastal restaurant, this is it. It arrived.
It didn't arrive alone. The Vineta Hotel finished a renovation this year that reshaped the plaza's south end. Coco's took the courtyard space with a French Riviera menu that pulls dishes straight from the Hotel du Cap, steak Diane included. Barts opened its first US location right next to it. Attached to both, The Vineta Bar reopened as a restored nod to the old Leopard Lounge, with a cocktail program built inside the historic interior rather than around it. A short walk away, The Polo Room, co-owned by polo player Nacho Figueras, opened with a dinner-only menu built on raw bar plates, house-made empanadas, and lobster frites.
Four kitchens, one hotel renovation, and a headline waterfront restaurant, all inside eight months. That is a fast build-out for a plaza that spent two decades with a dark theater at its center.
Retail followed the restaurants at the same pace. Bottega Veneta opened a nearly 3,000-square-foot boutique at Royal Poinciana Plaza this year, its first Florida address carrying the brand's fine jewelry line alongside ready-to-wear and leather goods. Rosie Assoulin opened a Palm Beach flagship in the same complex. Down the block, Bissinger's cut the ribbon on a chocolate shop at 251 Royal Poinciana Way, and Free People ran a pop-up at 245.
None of this is background noise. It's the same corridor, filling in at the same rate, on both sides of the street.
The Palm Beach Civic Association's January 2022 account describes the Playhouse's history and redevelopment proposal. Architect John Volk built the regency-style structure in 1958 as a community center for the island, and by the 1960s and 70s it was, in the words people who remember it still use, a genuine social hub, with Broadway plays, ballets, and dinner dancing in The Celebrity Room. The redevelopment plan called for up to 400 collapsible seats, a retractable backdrop wall that could turn the space into an open-air waterfront event venue, and a 200-seat restaurant carved out of the old Celebrity Room. WS Development's Alexandra Clark said at the time that the team had spent seven years studying how to reopen it successfully. Avie Glazer, the Palm Beach resident and Manchester United co-chairman who agreed to run programming through his Innovate group, said in the Palm Beach Civic Association's report:
"What I saw was people for 20 years yearning for something to be there. That's why we stepped in to fill this void in the community."
Amanda Skier of the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach called the plaza and Playhouse two of Volk's most significant and enduring works, and said in the Palm Beach Civic Association's report that the developer's plan gave her confidence "this beloved cultural venue will once again enrich our community for many years to come."
The 2026 coverage of Royal Poinciana Plaza discussed here focuses on restaurant openings and retail arrivals; none mentions the Playhouse. No public reopening date has surfaced.
The street underneath all this new activity has its own timeline, and it runs on a different clock than the restaurants. The Town of Palm Beach's public traffic impacts page currently lists watermain installation along Cocoanut Row between Royal Poinciana Way and Pendleton Lane, requiring a southbound lane closure with a flagging operation to keep traffic moving in both directions. Overhead wire removal tied to the town's undergrounding project is happening on Royal Poinciana itself, between North County Road and Cocoanut Row, with its own lane closure.
Some of it is even more granular than that. On August 25, a westbound lane on Royal Poinciana Way closed so a crane could replace a rooftop air conditioning unit. Three days later, a southbound lane closed again for a delivery truck dropping off roofing materials. This is construction happening on the same block as the new restaurants, not somewhere adjacent to it.
Bridge access changed too. The town has reduced bridge openings to once per hour during weekday morning and afternoon rush hours. If you're crossing the Intracoastal to get to dinner at Tutto Mare or a fitting at Bottega Veneta, that schedule now shapes when you leave the house.
Winter season is when Royal Poinciana Way is at its fullest, and this year that fullness includes four new kitchens and at least two major retail flagships that weren't open last winter. Street parking was already tight before any of this opened. With Tutto Mare, the Vineta cluster, and The Polo Room all pulling reservations at once, plan on a garage or a ride share rather than circling for a spot on the street itself.
The construction closures are mostly short-term and flagged in advance, but they cluster on the same corridor carrying the new foot traffic, so a five-minute walk from a Cocoanut Row parking spot to dinner might take longer this month than it did last spring.
And if you're one of the residents who has been waiting since 2022 for the Playhouse marquee to light up again, this year's openings aren't a signal that it's close. The restaurant half of that original announcement is fully built and seating guests. The Playhouse remains separate from the activity that has just opened around it.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property on or near Royal Poinciana Way, or want a read on how the plaza's build-out is shaping demand in the surrounding blocks, Illustrated Holmes tracks these changes as they happen on the island. Schedule a private consultation to talk through what you're seeing on your own street.
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