Palm Heights

Grand Cayman

Style is knowing what suits you, who you are, and what your assets are.

Bianca Jagger

Real estate is a simple game - take an overlooked property, fix it up, and rent it for more. Sometimes it’s even easy. But hospitality real estate is neither simple nor easy. Except for the handful of freaks that have the genetic abnormality allowing them to tap dance through a business filled with land mines, it’s a niche that most of us knuckle-dragging real estateurs should give a wide berth.

Gabriella Khalil is one of those freaks. She took a dumpy 1980s Hyatt hotel and - with no meaningful structural changes - created something both timeless and wonderful. Her 50-key hotel, unremarkable (except for its location along Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile beach) is now Palm Heights, a resort that feels like a Slim Aarons + Beyoncé collaboration.

Everything is on point, everything. From the yellow beach umbrellas and matching striped towels, to the pillow menus, to the designer staff uniforms, to what seems to be a restriction permitting only beautiful people as guests.

Music is everywhere, and it doesn’t miss - effortlessly ranging from Nina Simone to some subtle and obscure bossa nova band to beats like this from Marcos Valle:

Fries on the beach - with Sancerre and fresh flowers - is one of her winning recipes:

A before and after of her work:

No part of the property escaped a fashionable makeover - even the library looks like something Karl Lagerfeld would’ve designed.

The Palm Heights experience is design, music, beach, service, and food - with an emphasis on food.

Cloud-pillows of round roti (think warm butter but in bread form) served with coconut sambal and onion sounds ridiculous but it’s one of those dishes that, unsupervised, could lead to civil unrest.

At Tillie’s, the menu reads like 21 Club (R.I.P.) on Caribbean holiday:

But it’s not all Steak Diane and Baked Alaska - Palm Heights has a superb pizza joint, and Yashinoki is world-class open-air beachfront sushi:

Umbrellas in the sand, plants, more plants, and a few more plants for good measure:

The previous (lame) version of Tillie’s dining room:

After Ms. Khalil’s light but powerful renovation:

Like any good real estate deal, this one has some financial nuance. The property is leased from Ken Dart, heir to a foam cup fortune who made a few billion squeezing Greece and Argentina over government bond defaults and now owns a big chunk of Grand Cayman.

Let’s hope Ms. Khalil can keep up with her lease payments - Mr. Dart is not to be trifled with. But then again, freaks like Ms. Khalil are hard to replace.

Thank you for reading Asphalt Jungle - if you’re passionate about transformative real estate development, apply to join AUTOMATIC - a gathering for real estate developers interested in making wonderful places and the innovative retail & hospitality brands, designers, contractors, and capital providers that bring those places to life.

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