St. Regis Longboat Key resort aims for first Five Star resort on Florida's Gulf Coast

Little blue stickers dot the tiniest of imperfections at the St. Regis under construction on Longboat Key. One blue blemish denotes a tile that's not even an eighth of an inch from being flush.

Each day, a team focused on quality control scours the emerging luxury hotel, logging where paint may have dripped or a mismatched door hinge has been mistakenly installed.

"This is nothing," St. Regis General Manager Winfred van Workum said during a recent tour of what aspires to be the first five-star hotel on Florida's west coast. "You should see us a week before opening."

When will the St. Regis Longboat Key Resort open?

While a date hasn't yet been set, opening day is expected this summer for the largest development on Longboat Key in decades, set to fill a destination void on the island that's been a sore spot for years.

The storied Longboat Key property where the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort once welcomed presidents and celebrities has been out of commission for more than a dozen years.

The St. Regis Longboat Key Resort has been under construction for about 31 months following a groundbreaking ceremony hosted by the Orlando-based developer Unicorp National Developments in October 2021.

During a recent tour of the facilities, hotel management gave a preview of the property while construction continues, showcasing homages to local history and extensive investment in the site.

According to initial permits submitted to the Town of Longboat Key, the total construction value of the project is estimated to be more than $331.2 million.

Even while construction workers hustled throughout the property on a late afternoon in May, clear signs of the anticipated luxury feel were impossible to miss.

From ballrooms with a television the size of a stadium scoreboard to a state-of-the-art chocolate room dedicated just to create chocolate treats for guests, only select properties in the world can boost of more elegant offerings.

Then there's the real estate, boasting 800 feet of beach along the Gulf of Mexico. Guests will be welcomed upon entering to towering glass windows that face the stunning gulf waters lapping the white sand.

Service is key to five star rating sought by St. Regis Longboat Key Resort

Still, it will also take an army of workers and the creation of a service culture to eventually gain the coveted five-star designation.

Van Workum said the resort will employ about 400 people during its busy season, with his focus being on processes and procedures to create that service culture.

He said he's already filled most senior management positions, with more employees joining in the coming weeks as the resort readies for the summer opening.

The 168-room resort will include four full-service restaurants, a spa, a lazy river and a 350,000-gallon lagoon filled with sea creatures that guests will have the opportunity to swim with.

Before the St. Regis started rising from the 17.2-acre property in the 1600 block of Gulf of Mexico Drive, The Colony Beach and Tennis Resort had given Longboat's name widespread recognition.

More: For first time in years people celebrate at The Colony site, as St. Regis breaks ground

But its complicated ownership structure eventually led to legal disputes that prompted its closure in the summer of 2010.

There were at least four bankruptcies, competing visions of value and what should happen to the property, as well as the only time in Florida history that a condo association has been judicially terminated.

A legal case with 1,341 filings wasn't resolved until late 2021.

Chuck Whittall, president of Unicorp National Developments, eventually resolved the legal issues and obtained approval for the project after more than a decade working on what he has described as a passion project.

What goes into getting five-star hotel ratings?

The five-star rating isn't a given. Much work remains.

While Forbes recognizes about 350 Five Star hotels in the world, Florida's west coast currently doesn't have any and the entire state has just seven hotels earning the prestigious designation — all of them in either Palm Beach or Miami.

A checklist for an inspector for one of the agencies that designate five-star hotels includes 15 categories with things like whether employees welcome return guests by name, and whether staff can anticipate the needs of guests.

From a facilities standpoint, van Workum has little doubt the property will meet the five-star standard but pointed out that the rankings for either the Forbes Travel Guide or the AAA Diamond List put a lot of focus on a hotel's service culture.

Of the 15 categories in the checklist, only six of the fields focus on facilities and the building's infrastructure.

The lavish facilities are "the easy part − of course it’s not the cheapest part, but it is the easiest part,” he said. “Creating the culture, that’s the hard part.”

Creating that culture from scratch will be a heavy lift, even for van Workum, who has worked at multiple five-star hotels in his career in hospitality, including the Ritz Carlton Central Park in New York.

More: St. Regis Hotel and Residences on Longboat Key receives final approval for development plan

A five-star hotel, he said, needs to anticipate the wants and needs of the guests. He provided an example of one guest in New York who was visiting the city while buying boxes and boxes of shoes.

One of the hotel's employees noticed all the shoe boxes in the room and commissioned a pair of tiny chocolate shoes that were left in the room with a handcrafted card.

“That is the culture and the details that we will be training for that will set us apart,” he said. “We want to create a memory for the guests.”

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Five-Star Aspirations: St. Regis Longboat Key Resort near Sarasota