The Corner of Palm Beach Where the Season Now Starts on October 1

Clark Gable and Joan Crawford are still watching diners eat dinner on Royal Poinciana Way. Their painted likenesses, along with dozens of other Hollywood regulars from the 1950s, look down from a restored ceiling mural called "Venetian Festival" inside what used to be the Celebrity Room of the old Royal Poinciana Playhouse. The room went dark for more than twenty years. It reopened at the start of this year as the lounge inside Tutto Mare, the new restaurant that now shares a roof, and an address, with Glazer Hall.

That pairing, one theater and one restaurant inside the same building at 70 Royal Poinciana Way, is the part of this story that hasn't made it into the usual roundups of what's new on the island. Most coverage treats the two openings as separate items on a list. They aren't separate. They're the same renovation, split into two tenants, and together they've done something the building itself used to do decades ago and then stopped doing for a generation: give Palm Beach one place to eat and see a show without moving the car.

The Same Building, Twice Reopened

The structure dates to 1958, designed by architect John Volk on land that had once been part of Henry Flagler's Royal Poinciana Hotel. For decades it was the place where Palm Beach's glitterati saw touring Broadway shows and gathered in the building's Celebrity Room, the same room whose Robert Bushnell mural is now restored inside Tutto Mare. Then it sat empty. Longtime residents Jill and Avie Glazer eventually decided to do something about it, committing more than $15 million to convert the theater portion into a nonprofit performing arts center now called Glazer Hall, the island's first new nonprofit arts venue in over sixty years.

Glazer Hall opened January 22, 2026, to a sold-out house. It's a 24,000-square-foot, 400-seat theater with retractable seating and a glass back wall that looks straight out over the Intracoastal Waterway. Executive Director Allison Stockel, who spent 21 years running the Ridgefield Playhouse in Connecticut, built an inaugural lineup that ran from Corinne Bailey Rae and Matthew Morrison to Chazz Palminteri performing A Bronx Tale, the American Ballet Theatre, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and the Amazing Acrobats of Shanghai Circus.

Three weeks earlier, on January 2, the restaurant side of the same building opened as Tutto Mare, run by husband-and-wife team Gabby Karan de Felice and Gianpaolo de Felice, who built the Tutto il Giorno restaurant group in the Hamptons starting in 2008 with locations in Southampton, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, and Sag Harbor. Tutto Mare is now the only restaurant in the Town of Palm Beach that sits directly on the water, with a 200-seat dining room, two wine rooms, and a 1,200-square-foot terrace overlooking Lake Worth Lagoon and Palm Harbor Marina. Karan de Felice, who designed the space, described the relationship with the plaza's developer plainly: "The Perrys are big customers of ours."

What Used To Take Two Trips

Before this year, seeing a show on the island and getting a proper waterfront dinner meant picking one location for dinner and driving or walking somewhere else for the curtain. Palm Beach has never lacked for good tables. It has lacked a theater. Now the theater and the table are under one roof, connected by the same courtyard, sharing the same valet.

That changes the shape of an evening more than it sounds like it would. A resident heading to a 7:30 show at Glazer Hall can walk into Tutto Mare's Celebrity Room lounge at 6:00, order off the raised-floor bar that Karan de Felice built specifically to maximize proximity to the water, and be at their seat in the theater fifteen minutes later without ever getting back in a car. After the show, the same lounge is still open for a late plate.

A few things about the space make that routine easy rather than crowded:

• The Celebrity Room lounge is designed as a waiting area, with Balinese teak furniture, seafood towers, and caviar service meant for people killing twenty minutes before a table or a curtain rather than committing to a full seated dinner.
• The terrace faces the marina, not the parking area, so the walk from restaurant to theater doesn't cross back through the plaza's retail corridor.
• Tutto Mare also functions as a small shopping stop in its own right. Karan de Felice sells Kelly Klein ceramics, Robert Lee Morris jewelry, and cashmere made in Italy by her mother, Donna Karan, right on site, so the fifteen minutes between dinner and curtain has something to do besides check a phone.

None of this existed as a single itinerary a year ago. It exists now because two separate tenants, leased by the same landlord into the same historic building, happened to open three weeks apart.

October 1 Is Worth Marking Down

Glazer Hall's January 22 opening landed after Palm Beach's broader social season, which traditionally runs November through April, had already been underway for two months. As of this writing, the next performance on the hall's calendar is Black Violin on Thursday, October 1, 2026, which puts a marquee show on Royal Poinciana Way before that wider season, and its crowds, arrive in earnest.

That timing is worth using. More than sixty philanthropic galas typically fill the Palm Beach calendar between December and April, with the heaviest concentration landing in February, when it isn't unusual for two or three of them to fall on the same night. A resident who wants an unhurried evening at Glazer Hall and Tutto Mare, without competing against a Red Cross Ball or a Norton Museum gala for a valet spot, has a cleaner window in October and early November than at almost any later point in the season.

The venue has also been building a life beyond ticketed evening shows. Earlier this year, students from Palm Beach Day Academy, Washington Elementary, and West Gate Elementary took part in a "Ballet by the Book" field trip at the hall, part of the arts-education programming Stockel has folded into the schedule alongside the marquee performers. That's a detail easy to miss in a story about a glamorous reopening, but it's the piece that suggests the venue is planning to be a fixture rather than a season-only draw.

The Building Finally Matches Its Old Reputation

The murals in Tutto Mare's lounge were painted when the Royal Poinciana Playhouse was still the place where a night out meant dinner and a show at the same address. For twenty years that idea sat behind a locked door. What reopened this year isn't just a restaurant and a theater. It's the original premise of the building, restored down to the same physical room, with a restaurant crew that understands they're operating next to a stage rather than instead of one.

Residents who haven't been back to Royal Poinciana Way since before the renovation are walking into a building that finally does what it was built to do. The ones who caught the January opening got a preview. Black Violin on October 1 is the next chance to see it working at full stride, ahead of the season crowds.

For deeper context on how the island's landmarks, zoning history, and architectural provenance shape what gets built, restored, or reopened on Palm Beach, the team at Jennifer Hasozbek-Garcia tracks these changes as part of the daily work of representing property here. If a piece of Palm Beach's built history, old or new, ever affects a decision you're weighing on the island, reach out and get access to our private listings.