The Mall That Became A Destination

An outdoor shopping center in Palm Beach is the new hub for wellheeled pandemic transplants

- Amanda Gordon and Jordyn Holman

Upscale womenswear brand Veronica Beard has 18 stores across the U.S., including two in New York City. But none can compete with its boutique in Palm Beach, which first opened in mid-December.

“It became our No. 1 door overnight,” says co-owner Veronica Swanson Beard. “We believe in meeting the customer where she is, and we know she’s in Palm Beach.”

That success has come to embody a cultural and demographic shift in this booming Florida town. Last year, 8,107 people traded in a New York driver’s license for one with a Palm Beach County address. At the local airport, the number of private flights in and out was 12,442 in December, double the number recorded in the same month in 2019.

The influx is breathing life into the area’s retail market, and nowhere is this more apparent than at WS Development’s Royal Poinciana Plaza, a 180,000-square-foot luxury outdoor shopping mall with more than 30 boutiques that sits along Lake Worth Lagoon, right off one of the island’s three bridges to West Palm Beach. An analysis of geolocation data by Orbital Insight found that foot traffic there began to soar past pre-pandemic levels by late 2020, recovering faster than its peers around the country.

“Most retail experienced a boom in the first half of 2021, but Royal Poinciana Plaza is a massive exaggeration of that,” says Kevin O’Brien, chief executive officer of Orbital. During the first five months of the year, foot traffic averaged 34% above late 2019 levels, according to the company.