Drive down Camino Real past the gates of The Boca Raton this month and you will see scaffolding on one wing and nothing unusual on another. That is not an inconsistency. It is two different renovations running on two different clocks inside the same resort, and if you live near Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club and pass this property on your way to Lake Boca or downtown, it helps to know which one you are looking at.
The Boca Raton turned 100 on February 6, 2026, marking a century since Addison Mizner opened the Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn on that spot. A month later, hotelier Otto Kahn wrote that "the Cloister Inn is as fine a hotel as I know of anywhere, and a creation of singular beauty." A hundred years on, the property is still mid-transformation, just not the one most people assume when they hear "renovation."
Four Different Projects, Four Different Finish Lines
The confusion is understandable. The Boca Raton has been under some form of construction for most of the last six years, and the coverage tends to blur it into one long story. It is actually four distinct phases, and only one of them is happening right now.
| Phase | What Changed | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Harborside reinvention | Cloister main building, the 27-story Tower, new restaurants including Sadelle's and MB Supper Club | Reopened January through April 2022 |
| Beach Club, Phase II | Full reimagining of the Beach Club hotel | Unveiled January 2025 |
| Cloister guest rooms | 297 rooms and 28 suites, redesigned by the collective Curioso | Began August 2026, completing this fall |
| Mizner Center | 80,000 square feet across the Grand Ballroom, Royal Palm Ballroom, Addison Ballroom, Estate Ballroom, the Verandas, and the outdoor Spanish Terrace, led by Rockwell Group | Began August 2026, completing this fall |
The first two rows are finished business. The Harborside work reopened Cloister in early January of 2022 and brought the Tower back online that April, part of what the resort has described as a $200 million push. Beach Club followed as Phase II, unveiled in January 2025. Both of those hotels now carry Forbes Five-Star ratings, along with Spa Palmera, Yacht Club, and the Flybridge restaurant, all named in Forbes Travel Guide's 2026 Star Awards.
The bottom two rows are the actual news this season. Those started this past August and are scheduled to wrap this fall, which means if you have not been inside recently, what you are seeing on your next visit may be mid-transition rather than finished.
What's Happening Inside Right Now
The Cloister guest room project touches all 297 rooms and 28 suites in the original 1926 building, the one Mizner designed as the Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn. Curioso is leading that redesign, and the details lean hard into the property's own history rather than a generic refresh. Curvilinear headboards echo 1920s South Florida forms, and the hallway carpet pattern references Johnnie Brown, Mizner's pet monkey, a detail that shows up elsewhere on the property too, including the Monkey Bar tribute at MB Supper Club. Cloister is staying open through the entire process, so guests and members are moving through a hotel that is being redone one section at a time rather than closed and reopened all at once.
Mizner Center is the other half of the current work, and it is a bigger physical footprint. At 80,000 square feet, it is the space where most of the resort's private events, galas, and member gatherings happen, and Rockwell Group, the firm that previously designed the Tower hotel and The Game Room, is behind the refresh. New chandeliers, sconces, furnishings, and materials including stone and leather are going into all six named rooms, plus the Spanish Terrace outside. That work also began in August and is set to finish this fall.
What this means practically: if you have an event on the calendar for late this year, whether that is a wedding, a member gala, or a holiday party booked through Mizner Center, it is worth confirming which room you are in and whether it falls on the finished or not-yet-finished side of that timeline. A ballroom booked for October could look different than the same room booked for December.
The Centennial Calendar Is Running Underneath All of It
The renovation is only one thread of what 2026 has been at The Boca Raton. The centennial celebration started well before this fall's construction and has been paced across the entire year rather than compressed into a single event.
It began with the Cloister Inn Museum, which opened in December 2025 in partnership with the Boca Raton Historical Society. The museum includes preserved furnishings, a newly commissioned portrait of Mizner by Palm Beach artist Serge Strosberg, and a self-guided audio tour tracing the property back to its earliest chapters. Alongside it came Assouline's coffee-table book, "The Boca Raton: A Century of Being Iconic," written by James Reginato with archival photography and interviews.
The New Year's transition into 2026 carried its own centennial marker. The resort built a holiday display called "100 Trees for 100 Years," with each tree representing a year of the property's history, combining for roughly 10,000 lights, 7,000 ornaments, and 500 feet of tinsel around Cloister. Fireworks welcomed both the new year and the start of the centennial on New Year's Eve.
January brought a run of cultural programming for members: an art exhibit and lecture from Strosberg, a candlelight concert from the Palm Beach Symphony, and an outdoor evening of 1920s-era arias from the Palm Beach Opera. On the culinary side, the resort's dining venues have been rotating heritage dishes and limited pours, including a Shafer "Century" Cabernet Sauvignon, and the pastry team built a seven-foot, four-foot-high edible sculpture of the original Cloister building out of roughly 1,800 pounds of chocolate, sugar, and fondant. President and CEO Daniel Hostettler summed up the approach simply: "A centennial is more than a birthday."
Read against that backdrop, the fall renovation is not a separate story. It is the same instinct that built the museum and commissioned the book, applied to the rooms people actually sleep and gather in. The resort has been treating its hundredth year as an argument that the original building is worth preserving in detail, down to a carpet pattern referencing a monkey nobody alive today ever met, while still finishing the work in time for the season when the property is busiest.
Why the Distinction Matters If You're Two Minutes Away
For anyone living in Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club, The Boca Raton is not a tourist landmark you visit occasionally. It sits on the same stretch of waterway, close enough that the property functions as part of the neighborhood's own geography, whether that means a dinner reservation, a member event, or simply the view from a boat heading out toward Lake Boca. Knowing that the Beach Club and Tower have been finished and open since 2022 and 2025 respectively, while Cloister's rooms and Mizner Center are the pieces actively wrapping up this fall, means you are not caught off guard by scaffolding on one wing and a fully polished lobby on another. It also means that if you are planning to host something at Mizner Center before the year is out, the smart move is a direct call to confirm which rooms are back in rotation before you lock in a date.
Royal Palm Estates Realty is an independent real estate brokerage and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club. This is not an official advertisement or publication of the club. Club names and marks are the property of their respective owners.
The century mark at The Boca Raton is a reminder of how much can change around a neighborhood without changing the neighborhood itself. If you have questions about what's happening near Royal Palm, or you are simply curious what a home in this pocket of Boca Raton is worth in today's market, Royal Palm Estates Realty knows this stretch of Camino Real as well as anyone. Reach out any time you want a local read on what's changing around you.
