The company behind Via Mizner, a mixed-use development in Boca Raton anchored by a Mandarin Oriental hotel, will break ground early next year on the hotel and will open the sales center for a Mandarin-branded luxury condominium.
Luanne Lenberg, senior vice president, Penn-Florida Cos., also said the company opened the first phase of the three-phase Via Mizner development, a 366-unit apartment building, about 70 days ago.
“So far, we have more than 100 leases,” Lenberg said Tuesday night, speaking as a member of a panel presented by the Urban Land Institute. “The product is off to a very good start.”
Monthly rents at apartment building, called 101 Via Mizner , start at $1,800 for a studio unit.
Lenberg said the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Boca Raton will be only the seventh in the United States, and the branded condominium next door, called Residences at Mandarin Oriental, will be one of about a dozen worldwide.
Buyers of units at the Mandarin-branded condominium will have access to spas, pools and other amenities at the Mandarin Oriental hotel through a skybridge connecting the two buildings.
Lenberg said Penn-Florida will open the sales center for the condominium project in a renovated building near Boca Raton’s old Town Hall at 71 North Federal Highway. Preconstruction prices start at about $2 million per condo unit.
The Via Mizner development site is at 101 East Camino Real in Boca Raton, on the northeast corner Camino Real and Federal Highway, not far from the Boca Resort & Club.
In the second phase of the development, Penn-Florida will build the 158-key Mandarin Oriental hotel on a site between the apartment building and the condominium. The condo building, which will have 85 units, will constitute the third phase of Via Mizner.
Lenberg said Boca Raton “needs hotel options. The Boca Resort has been kind of the only game in town in downtown Boca.”
She also said the retail component of Penn-Florida’s development, called Shoppes at Via Mizner, will offer “what retailers are looking for today … something that is more reflective of a downtown street in an urban retail environment. It’s not all about the malls anymore. It’s more about other choices out there.”
Another panelist, Troy Ballard, senior managing director of Cushman & Wakefield, said Via Mizner’s non-waterfront location is unusual for a luxury residential and hotel development. “I was a little surprised,” he said.
But Ballard also acknowledged that some residents and hotel guests at Via Mizner will have “exceptional” views of the Boca Resort & Club, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the ocean.