Foundation work is underway at 524 Datura Street in West Palm Beach, where a 21-story tower is taking shape a short walk from the city’s Brightline station. Alida Residences and Tribute Portfolio by Marriott, as the project is known, is being developed by LD&D and IGEQ, who broke ground over the summer and plan to start vertical construction soon. The site sits in a part of downtown that is already busy with new development.
Getting here took years. According to Palm Beach property data, the developers finished assembling the multi-parcel site in 2022 for nearly $5 million, then worked through a multiyear process that included rezoning, a pause during the pandemic and a redesign. The rezoning raised the site’s floor-area ratio from 2.75 to 6.5 in exchange for a hospitality component, which is why a hotel shares the property with the apartments.
Kast Construction, the project’s general contractor, says foundation crews are working with auger cast piles, sheet piles and tangent piles, the groundwork that has to be in place before vertical construction can begin. From there, the tower will rise 21 floors, reaching roughly 230 feet at its tallest point.
The residential and hotel uses may look like a single building, but they will be built separately as two independent properties. Alida Residences will offer 181 units, from studios to three-bedrooms ranging from 500 to more than 2,000 square feet, and the developers say it will include the first rooftop pool in West Palm Beach alongside other high-end amenities. On the eastern side of the property, Tribute Portfolio Hotel will have 112 rooms.
The project also fills a gap in the downtown pipeline. Alida is the first high-rise multifamily project to break ground in Downtown West Palm Beach since the Laurel, a luxury development by Related Ross. FrontRange Capital partnered with the developers as the capital and investment partner, and its CEO, David Robertson, framed the deal around supply. He said the tower brings “much-needed high-rise rental inventory” to a market where demand has outpaced it, pointing to strong office and hospitality investment downtown but very little new multifamily.
When finished, the tower will be the second on its block, part of a wave of transit-oriented development in West Palm Beach and in other cities that gained stations along Brightline’s route.