Palm Beach Island August Field Notes and New Openings

This summer, Wednesdays on Worth offered a way to explore the avenue, while Glazer Hall, four blocks north, offers another option for an evening out.

The contrast between Worth Avenue's summer promotion and recent openings on Royal Poinciana Way is one story of Palm Beach this August.

Wednesdays on Worth during the summer

Wednesdays on Worth ran every Wednesday from July 15 through August 12, 2026. The promotion included shop discounts, restaurant specials, and a new partnership with the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts that gave shoppers a shot at complimentary tickets to a fall production.

The participating list reads like a cross-section of the avenue's tenant mix rather than its marquee names. Marley's Palm Beach Collection offered 15 percent off, excluding jewelry and handbags. Sherry Frankel's Mélangerie was at 10 percent off. 120% Lino poured Prosecco with a small gift. Carolina Herrera served champagne alongside 50 percent off its Resort and Spring collection. BiCE, Swifty's, Pizza al Fresco, and Renato's ran the dining side of the promotion. It was a good excuse for a walk and a chance to visit participating shops and restaurants on an August Wednesday.

Recent changes on Worth Avenue

Part of what makes this August feel different is visible the moment you walk past 150 Worth Avenue. The Esplanade's Saks Fifth Avenue closed its 50,000-square-foot, two-level space in April 2025 after more than four decades as an anchor tenant, and the redevelopment that followed has reshuffled the block's economics in ways worth knowing if you live nearby.

A $200 million sale of a 1979-built retail complex and a $4,300-per-square-foot storefront transaction are not signs of a street in decline. Wednesdays on Worth brought visitors to participating stores, while O'Connor Capital Partners and architect Fairfax & Sammons work on the conversion of the former Saks space into retail and office space.

Four blocks north, new openings on Royal Poinciana Way

Royal Poinciana Way tells a different story this summer, and it is not because the street is newer. It has been here as long as Worth Avenue. The last eighteen months have brought a run of openings along the street.

The biggest is Glazer Hall, the rebuilt Royal Poinciana Playhouse, which opened January 22, 2026, after sitting dark for 22 years. The original 787-seat playhouse hosted Bob Hope and touring Broadway before closing in 2004. What replaced it is smaller (400 seats) and funded differently, a $30 million project backed by more than $15 million from Palm Beach residents Avie and Jill Glazer, whose family owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Its opening lineup told you what kind of venue it intends to be: Corinne Bailey Rae, Broadway's Matthew Morrison, Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale, American Ballet Theatre, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, all inside what's billed as Palm Beach's first new nonprofit arts venue in more than 60 years.

Before Glazer Hall, the last time Palm Beach got a new nonprofit performing arts organization, Nixon was still president.

Dining and retail on the same stretch have moved just as fast. Tutto Mare opened in January 2026 inside Royal Poinciana Plaza as the only restaurant in the Town of Palm Beach sitting directly on the Intracoastal. The Vineta Hotel reopened with Coco's, a Mediterranean restaurant from executive chef Brian Rodriguez working alongside Sebastian Broda of Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, plus the Vineta Bar, built as a nod to the old Leopard Lounge. The Polo Room Palm Beach opened with polo star Nacho Figueras and restaurateur Thierry Beaud of Pistache among its owners. Hadleigh's landed a new storefront on Royal Poinciana Way this year, and Bissinger's celebrated its grand opening by donating 20 percent of sales through September 20 to the Cancer Alliance of Help and Hope.

Together, these openings add to the options on Royal Poinciana Way.

One possible evening on the island

For example, dinner at Coco's or Tutto Mare, a show at Glazer Hall, and a nightcap at the Vineta Bar make one possible itinerary.

Daytime, the Four Arts keeps its own rhythm

If your version of a Wednesday is closer to a lecture than a late dinner, the Society of the Four Arts is still the island's steadiest daytime option, even in the off months. Its main exhibition space, the Esther B. O'Keeffe Gallery, runs traveling shows from November through Easter and sits quiet the rest of the year by design, but the campus doesn't close down entirely. On August 4, the Four Arts hosted a community memory quilt workshop called Stitching Our Stories. Looking ahead, the fall lecture calendar is already public: Elizabeth Sails with Kristin Owens on September 23, Broken Country on September 9, and a talk on the life of explorer and conservationist Candido Rondon on September 15.

A resident's short list for the rest of August

• Glazer Hall, at the old Royal Poinciana Playhouse site, is worth checking for its next scheduled performance if you haven't been inside yet. It's the first new nonprofit arts venue the island has seen in over six decades.
• Bissinger's on Royal Poinciana Way is donating a fifth of sales to the Cancer Alliance of Help and Hope through September 20, which is as good a reason as any to stop in before then.
• The Esplanade's Saks redevelopment is still under construction. Expect scaffolding on that stretch of Worth Avenue for a while yet.
• The Four Arts has its fall lecture series posted, with tickets required but no charge for most talks.

The island still moves at its own pace in August. This summer, Worth Avenue and Royal Poinciana Way each offer their own mix of events, dining, and retail.

If you're weighing a move to Palm Beach, or you already call it home and want a read on where the market stands, Scott Correale has spent more than two decades inside these streets and their transactions. Schedule a Private Consultation to talk through what any of this means for your own address on the island.