The Restoration of La Palma
The Return of a Piece of the City’s Historic Fabric
In 1924, the Cla-Reina/La Palma Hotel opened as one of the first hotels in Coral Gables. Designed by H. George Fink, a cousin of Coral Gables founder George Merrick and one of the city’s architectural stars, the building is an example of the small-scale, Mediterranean-influenced design that established the style and appearance of the Gables. Today, it is one of the last of the original commercial buildings that once formed the downtown fabric of the City Beautiful.
Over the years, the building has taken different names and changed hands more than once. By 1940, it had become the Solana Hotel and remained that way through the ‘60s. It became a landmark for the community, hosting dinners, weddings, meetings, and many, many guests.
Now, the historic landmark has been renovated under its latest owners: the Maven Real Estate Group, led by Marc Schwarzberg and Jose Ortega, a boutique development group that, among other properties, owns a half-dozen buildings on Giralda Plaza. Among these is 120 Giralda, once the city’s first U.S. Post Office, now repurposed to house four restaurants and an engineering firm. Maven took on the La Palma project after purchasing the property in 2018.
“Giralda set us up to uniquely tackle [La Palma],” says Ortega of Maven’s historical work in the Gables. “The building is gorgeous, so we didn’t touch the outside. It’s exactly the same as it has been for 100 years. We know it’s a part of the culture in this city. Everybody’s been here for an event, or lunch, or dinner, so it has a lot of value in the community. All of those things spoke to us.”
The partners wanted to keep the historic landmark as close to its original design as possible while also reviving it for the community’s use as retail and commercial space. They spent hours online searching for pictures of the original building to make that dream of restoration a reality.
“We pored over hundreds of photos archived at the [city’s] historic preservation office,” Ortega says. “We scoured every online resource for random photos, and found old, scanned periodicals.” In this way, they were able to match the designs of the windows exactly to the originals.
They also found a 1924 newspaper article which showed that the entrance on Alhambra Circle was originally an open breezeway, long since enclosed. To maintain that original historic design, they installed frameless glass walls at both ends of the entrance hallway, replicating the see-through appearance while keeping it climate-controlled.
Torre Companies, which had experience in historical restoration and building townhomes in Mediterranean coral-rock style, was tasked with completing the renovations. The multi-year process, initially delayed by the pandemic, was completed late last year. According to CEO Venny Torre, the plan from the beginning was to create a feeling of going back in time from the first step inside — while still updating the structure. They replaced the whole roof, re-designed and enlarged the restaurant spaces, and replaced the lighting, all while keeping in mind the original building’s design.
One big challenge was ensuring the building’s sturdiness in the face of a hurricane while still preserving the outside façade. The solution was to literally construct a new building inside the historic shell, from footer to parapet, to ensure structural integrity.
“This building has another building on the inside,” says Torre. “There are six inches of [new] concrete in the entire building from floor to roof. It’s a brand-new building but the outside is the old skin.” That includes the 100-year-old bricks and decades-old stucco, which are still there as part of past designs. “I can count on my fingers how many buildings of this kind are left,” says Torre. “So, to keep it intact, protected, and save it is very important for our city. This is our story.”
Although the building had already been designated as a historic landmark in Coral Gables, the Maven Group went through the process of adding it to the National Register of Historic Places as well, giving it extra protection and setting the property up to potentially receive national preservation benefits.
Throughout La Palma’s history, the first floor of the hotel was always used for retail, while the second floor comprised hotel rooms. Now, the first floor is occupied by two Michelin-starred chefs, with an interior design firm scheduled to move in this month, and the second floor consists of various businesses, including an atelier for couture designer Mayda Cisneros and the corporate offices of Chef Thomas Keller.
The first place to open at La Palma was Shingo, a 14-seat omakase restaurant by Chef Shingo Akikuni that opened in the summer of 2023. Akikuni earned a Michelin star at Hiden in Wynwood, where he was executive chef, before he decided to open his own restaurant. “We ate his food, and it was spectacular,” says Ortega. “But it was meeting with him and his business partner and hearing what their plans were that showed us, ‘They get it. They appreciate it.’”
Akikuni and his business partner hired a firm out of Kyoto to design the restaurant in Japan, which was then deconstructed, shipped to La Palma, and assembled on-site by a Japanese carpenter. “That dedication to executing this at its highest level, that’s exactly what we needed,” Ortega says.
The second high-end restaurant to open at La Palma was Bouchon Bistro, opened in September 2023 on the first floor. In its pre-pandemic incarnation, the Bouchon space was home to Vinton’s, famous for giving all female diners a rose and a pillow for their feet. Schwarzberg says they increased the restaurant’s footprint from 3,400 to 7,400-square-feet. Here, Michelin-starred Chef Thomas Keller, considered one of world’s top masters of French cuisine, serves up classic French fare.
Entrance to Chef Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bistro (left) and the renovated courtyard with outdoor seating (right).
(Photos by Nicholas Casamayor with Welder Digital)
“In many respects, Thomas took more of a gamble on us than we did on him,” Schwarzberg says. “When he first came through the building, we didn’t even have a roof. All we had was a set of plans and the promise that we would be able to deliver what we have here now.”
What they have now, Ortega says, is still La Palma — a building that reflects the character of Coral Gables and a monument to the city’s nearly 100-year memory. He recalls one instance during construction when a local resident stopped to ask what they were doing. After a brief explanation, he revealed he’d been married there 30 years ago.
“They say a person’s memory is greater than the reality,” says Schwarzberg. “We just really hoped to match people’s memories of it.”
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