Stephen Ross’ Big Bet On West Palm Beach

by Natasha Wolff | July 16, 2026 4:55 am

Stephen Ross[1] doesn’t just build buildings. He builds the kind of places where money and influence pool together—and then he waits for everyone else to show up. In recent years, he’s made his biggest bet yet outside New York: turning West Palm Beach into a serious business destination.

As the founder of Related Companies[2] and chairman and CEO of Related Ross[3], the real estate titan spent decades reshaping Manhattan’s west side with Hudson Yards, the sprawling mixed-use project that became a case study in how to redevelop a city from scratch. Now he’s doing something similar in South Florida, but with a cleaner read on the moment: a generation of wealthy people has been moving to Florida, and whoever builds the right infrastructure first stands to own the market.

CityPlace

The numbers are large. Ross has committed more than $10 billion to West Palm Beach, anchored by a pair of trophy office towers—10 and 15 CityPlace—designed to draw hedge funds, private equity firms and financial players who want the upside of Florida’s tax environment without giving up the kind of address that signals they mean business.

He knows, though, that offices alone don’t make a city. So around the towers he’s building luxury waterfront condominiums, retail, restaurants and the kind of cultural programming that gives a neighborhood an identity. The pitch to a potential relocator isn’t just “lower taxes.” It’s “you won’t miss New York.”

360 Rosemary

It’s working, at least by one measure. Related Ross has quietly become the largest commercial landlord in downtown West Palm Beach—which means Ross now controls enough of the district to shape it. He can choose the tenants, set the tone and determine what kind of place this becomes. That’s the real asset.

People who watch these markets closely aren’t surprised. The migration of financiers, family offices and entrepreneurs to Palm Beach County has been building for years. Ross isn’t chasing that trend—he’s putting a frame around it.

The ambition, plainly stated: make West Palm Beach a place where serious deals get done, not just a warm-weather escape for people whose real lives are elsewhere.

Whether it works at that scale is still an open question. But Ross has done it once before, on a much harder piece of ground.

One Flagler

Source URL: https://dujour.com/cities/palm-beach/stephen-ross-west-palm-beach/