Pharrell, David Grutman teaming up on 400-key Bahamas resort

Partners’ latest hospitality venture to open on Atlantis Paradise Island in 2024

Grammy winner Pharrell Williams and David Grutman of Groot Hospitality (Getty Images, Groot Hospitality, TripAdvisor)
Grammy winner Pharrell Williams and David Grutman of Groot Hospitality (Getty Images, Groot Hospitality, TripAdvisor)

Grammy winner Pharrell Williams and hospitality entrepreneur David Grutman are ready to test their business relationship in international waters.

After opening a $200 million hotel in Miami Beach last year, the two are teaming up again to develop an approximately 400-key resort in Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas, CNN reported.

Dubbed “Somewhere Else,” the resort is expected to open at the beginning of 2024 and will include several restaurants and bars, as well as bungalows complete with recording studios, according to CNN.

Shawn Sullivan, a partner with The Rockwell Group, is leading the design team, which will infuse the resort with aesthetics of “tropical modernism,” according to Williams. That means cascading pools, polychrome rooms and color accents throughout the property.

The main building of the resort will be redeveloped from the Beach Tower, the oldest hotel on Atlantis Paradise Island. The pink building was designed by the late Morris Lapidus, who also designed the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, where Grutman’s LIV nightclub has operated since 2008.

According to CNN, the project marks the first time Brookfield Properties, which owns Atlantis Paradise Island, has broken from extending the Atlantis branding to a hotel on the property. Williams and Grutman will retain 100 percent ownership of Somewhere Else’s intellectual property, and were given “carte blanche on how to execute it,” according to the publication.

Grutman said the resort would emphasize the outdoors and have a mix of fun spaces and quiet ones, noting that there won’t be a nightclub on the grounds. The resort’s pricing will be neither affordable nor ultra-high-end, but somewhere in between, Sullivan said.

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“We want to do this one differently than what you’re used to from Pharrell and I,” Grutman told CNN.

Grutman and Williams previously partnered on the 266-key Goodtime Hotel in South Beach, which scored a $164 million refinancing in September. The hotel opened in April of last year and includes 100,000 square feet of public spaces, 45,000 square feet of retail and a 30,000-square-foot restaurant.

The hotel brought perhaps too many good times, quickly racking up nearly 30 noise violations, leading to a motion to have the hotel’s conditional use permit revoked or modified.

Grutman and Williams also partnered on the Swan restaurant, which opened in the Miami Design District in 2018.

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[CNN] — Holden Walter-Warner