The Nora Hotel

The Nora Hotel is a 201-room boutique hotel in West Palm Beach's Nora District, the first ground-up project outside New York for BD Hotels. A Pastis anchors the ground floor, a rooftop restaurant called Lilly's tops it, and the opening is reported for 19 October 2026, a date not yet confirmed by the group.

The place

1135 North Railroad Avenue, in the Nora District, a roughly 13-acre redevelopment of old warehouses just north of downtown West Palm Beach. The district runs along the Florida East Coast Railway tracks, between Quadrille Boulevard and Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, and the hotel is its second phase, after 13 restored warehouse buildings given over to shops, restaurants and offices.

The Brightline station at 501 Evernia Street is about a mile from the hotel site, a 10 to 20 minute walk. The beaches and Worth Avenue are across the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach, so this is a stay for the mainland, not the island.

The concept

BD Hotels, the New York group behind the Hotel Chelsea and The Mercer, leads design, development, ownership and operation, with Sean MacPherson involved in the design and Wheelock Street Capital as a partner. It is the company's first new-construction hotel outside New York, and it comes in the year BD marks its 40th. Stantec is both design architect and architect of record; Gachot Studios, also from New York, designed the interiors. The reference point, per BD Hotels' coverage, is the Mediterranean-style architecture Addison Mizner left in Palm Beach.

The building is five storeys, with 201 rooms, 14 of them suites according to Haute Living. Richard Born of BD Hotels has described it as a four-plus-star hotel meant to feel residential, saying guests should feel "like you're in your own bedroom rather than in a cookie-cutter branded hotel". The cost was reported at just under $200 million, close to $1 million a key.

No room rates have been published, and BD has not said how the rooms will be sold at launch.

Dining & wellness

A Pastis, Stephen Starr's New York brasserie, takes about 13,300 sq ft of the ground floor. Starr Restaurants also provides in-room dining and co-created the rooftop restaurant and lounge, called Lilly's, which sits on a pool deck with private cabanas, garden dining and two bars. There is also a lobby bar, a garden, a gym and a ground-floor Sisley Spa Paris. Pastis has so far announced only a fall 2026 opening, so the restaurant may not open the same day as the rooms.