Twenty-two years ago, I first visited Harbour Island, a three-mile long islet off North Eleuthera in the Bahamas that people were calling the next St. Barth—and quoted India Hicks, the designer, writer and then co-owner of a chic hotel there called The Landing. “As soon as Harbour Island becomes St. Barth,” said the granddaughter of Queen Victoria’s great-grandson and bridesmaid for Diana, Princess of Wales, “we’ll move on.” Though Hicks did divest her share of the hotel years ago, she has not, in fact, left.
But today’s “Briland,” as the island is known in the local dialect (which drops the H from words that start with that letter), has moved on, though it still echoes its French Caribbean counterpart. Both attract affluent Americans, second- (or fifth-) homeowners, big yachts, and big investments. Both, lately, are served by the sleek Pilatus puddle jumpers of Tradewind Aviation. And—as summer travel approaches, and Briland’s hotel, villa rental, and restaurant businesses slow down—the trade parade is gearing up. Its shores are alive with construction crews: it’s prep time for next year’s high season. The big Briland developments to know about are the reinvention of a longstanding bay-side resort and marina by a pair of veteran Harbour Island hoteliers, and the arrival of a new competitor.
A Briland Club cottage
Opened in the late-1960s by a scuba diver from Long Island and his Scottish wife, Romora Bay Resort and Marina was later owned by Lionel Rotcage, son of the Parisian nightclub legend Regine. Rotcage heard about it from photographers from French Elle who’d helped popularize and populate the island with the fashion set.
By 2000, Briland was attracting the likes of Elle Macpherson, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, and the Miller family of Duty Free Shops fame. At the time, Tom and Silma Sherman owned Coral Sands, a hotel on the island’s long pink sand beach favored by patricians. The Shermans later bought the sprawling Pink Sands resort from Jamaican music legend Chris Blackwell, before selling both. “Now, we are at it again!” Silma says, updating the property with pickleball courts and soon, a new spa and gym. Also on the way is the reincarnation of Sip Sip, a beloved island lunch spot favored by the Millers and Macpherson. In the meantime, Upstairs at Romora, overlooking the extensive marina and the island’s rum-soaked sunsets, serves all day, with lilting Bahamian hospitality.
Just to the south, the Briland Club Hotel, Residences & Marina, rising on what was once the island’s airstrip, sparkle like Walton Goggins’s veneers. After four years of work from ocean to bay, its 34-slip marina, beach club, bar and restaurant, and several Bunny Williams-designed cottages are open and available for purchase or rental.
A view from Upstairs at Romora. Photo by Michael Gross.
One caveat: Yachts need a shallow draft and local pilots to navigate the treacherous Devil’s Backbone passage. Arguably, the yachtless have an easier time of it: they land at North Eleuthera Airport and reach the island after brief taxi and water taxi rides. More cottages, larger homes, a clubhouse in an island landmark called The Haunted House, and a boutique hotel are planned once the Briland Club is completed in about six years. The father-daughter developers, Michael and Mélanie Wiener, and their patriarch David, a 99-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, visited the island for a decade before beginning the project, “to share what we have cherished for years,” says Mélanie.
Harbour Island once provided safe haven for Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution. Hicks, the Shermans and the Wieners are latter-day Loyalists—to a brushed-up Briland that is anything but laid-back, especially when it comes to cultivating new recruits.