Cartier wins approval to open 3,700-square-foot store in Palm Beach

A French luxury goods brand with longstanding ties to Palm Beach is planning to open a new store on the island.

In a unanimous vote May 15, the Town Council approved a special exception request from Cartier to build a 3,700-square-foot boutique within the redeveloped Royal Poinciana Playhouse.

Cartier, which opened its first boutique on the island a century ago, currently occupies an 1,800-square-foot space in the Royal Poinciana Plaza.

The new location follows customer appeals for more space, Alex Delamort, assistant vice president for the southeast region of Cartier North America, told the council.

The brand's current store, which opened in 2021, was "very successful" in terms of productivity, he added, but did not meet customers' needs.

Cartier's original Palm Beach store on Worth Avenue closed in 2017.

"Clients are frustrated," Delamort told the meeting. "They want a bigger boutique. They want to have different assortments. They tell us every day. We have reconnected with so many what we call sleeping clients, sleeping VIPs, but we want more. So that's why we're trying to expand our footprint and really better serve the community and connect better with clients. It's a beautiful project."

The new location would occupy three retail bays in the redesigned playhouse, which will include a cultural arts center, waterfront restaurant and retail and gallery space when complete.

Construction began last summer and is making 'significant' progress, Alexandra Clark, vice president of Asset Strategy & Experience for WS Development, the project's developer, told the Daily News last month.

Many new businesses, she added, could be ready to open by next season.

"The last several months have been spent on very critical infrastructure, but now we turn to the fun stuff," Clark said. "There will be a significant amount of visible progress over the next few months, and it will be an exciting time to drive over the bridge and see meaningful change every week."

Cartier sought a special exception for its new store because current town code limits individual retail use in the C-PC zoning district to 3,000 square feet of gross leasable area. The new store would total 3,774 square feet.

The store would not increase parking demands or intensity within the plaza, James Crowley, an attorney with the Gunster law firm that is representing Cartier, told the council.

"We're just here because the interior walls are going away," he said. "The space, instead of being three, is now one. We're not increasing square footage."

Council members overwhelmingly voiced support for the store, and voted unanimously to approve the special exception request.

"It's a longstanding popular store in this area," Council President Bobbie Lindsay said. "It already has a following, and it's a very low intensity use. You can count the people on your hands every time you go in there, and it's a very specific customer. It will be beautiful."

"This could be a more high volume retailer like Zara or H&M that would draw in more traffic," added council member Ted Cooney. "(But) this is a narrow, higher-end clientele. There's a more limited market than mass fashion. It's great."

Cartier's original Palm Beach boutique at 214 Worth Ave. opened in 1924 and was its second in the country, following the Cartier Mansion on New York City's Fifth Avenue.

The company's name has been linked to the wealthy and the celebrated for more than a century, including important Palm Beach socialites.

Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post was a longtime Cartier client, as well as Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson, who owned the first panther brooch, and Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond.

Jodie Wagner is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at jwagner@pbdailynews.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.