The American affluent, at least on the East Coast, have summered in the Hamptons and wintered in Palm Beach for more than a century. Their shared seasonal residents have always shaped these markets, and players in the hospitality sector are now darting between the two as well, cross-pollinating the services and the brands their clients know and want.
That includes the group behind Mary Lou’s, a cocktail lounge, supper club and music venue hybrid that opened in West Palm Beach’s old Berto’s Bait & Tackle Shop in January and quickly attracted the well-heeled and high-profile. Michael Jordan, Venus Williams, Baby Jane Holzer and Cornelia Guest are counted among Mary Lou’s revelers. Just six months later, the team of Alex Melillo, Joe Cervasio and Topher Grubb has come to Montauk. They partnered with West Palm Beach-based NDT Developers to expand into the space that used to house Johnny Marlin’s and plan to be an East End institution for many summers to come. The property is now owned by Mike Walrath, a venture investor and owner of the Surf Lodge in Montauk.
The Real Deal caught up with Melillo and Cervasio to chat about the overlap between Palm Beach and the Hamptons, and the intersection of real estate and nightlife.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What’s the story behind Mary Lou’s and your vision for the club?
Alex Melillo: The vision behind Mary Lou’s was really to bring a multi-dimensional space that acted as a great landscape and backdrop for people to have fun on different levels and enjoy a culinary experience, along with great music programming. We wanted to bring back what we thought was the golden era of nightlife, of the ’70s and ’80s, when people would dance with no humility and just have fun, right? We felt what was currently out in the market wasn’t conducive to Palm Beach’s landscape and the growth.
Joe Cervasio: There was an intimacy missing in hospitality, not only in Palm Beach, in all markets, right? And there’s few brands that really do incredible with that. We wanted to bring these memories and experiences in a small setting like Mary Lou’s Palm Beach’s, where people leave there going, “I cannot believe what I just saw, what I just felt, what I just ate, what I just drank.”
What does a good night at Mary Lou’s look like?
AM: Disco ball spinning, smiles everywhere, not a cell phone in sight. People dancing like no one’s watching, because no one is watching. It’s a full release, total freedom. The kind of energy that can’t be made up, just people authentically enjoying themselves and having fun.
“Disco ball spinning, smiles everywhere, not a cell phone in sight. People dancing like no one’s watching, because no one is watching.”
Why did you start in West Palm Beach?
JC: We’re all linked to the West Palm area in some way. Alex has had a home in the Jupiter area for years. My wife, Dottie, and our other partner, Topher, are from the Wellington area.
AM: Palm Beach always felt like this aspirational world, bright, colorful, a lifestyle of leisure and beauty, and for all of its influence and affluence and vibrancy, there was never really a venue that mastered energy or gave people a space to fully express it. That contrast was always fascinating to me, why it didn’t exist. And we really felt like it was needed. Palm Beach has this [reputation] as this sleepy place, and it’s really the furthest thing from it. Really, Palm Beach just likes to party in private. The nights are always long. They just tend to unfold behind the gates of homes, in tucked-away estates, on boats and things of that nature. West Palm Beach had just been missing the proper space that invites you out to stay, let loose and feel completely comfortable and in your own skin.
We’re coming at this from a real estate perspective. What were you looking for when you started your search for Mary Lou’s West Palm Beach? What were the boxes you had to check?
JC: It’s a great question. We were looking for a freestanding building. We really wanted something that we can build an identity off of. And to be honest, we lucked out with the most unique freestanding building that was available.
To be honest, I didn’t see it at first, because it was a bait shop for 70 years that sold everything from bait and tackle to bottles of Dom Perignon. So it’s a very rundown building, but it had so much character and so much history to it. We had every opportunity under the sun to knock it down and build up something new, but we didn’t want to take away people’s memories of the building. It’s this incredibly unassuming, plain building, but it’s got this octagonal shape to it.
The refrain in real estate is always location, location, location. Do you think that holds true in the case of nightlife, or is it more about the space?
JC: Let’s say 50-50. I mean, if I answer that, I don’t want to take away from the space, because it’s obviously the space, but the location is incredible. West Palm is on the rise and if you look at the neighborhood that we’re in, near El Cid, it’s considered SoSo [South of Southern neighborhood]. We’re just over the bridge that takes you to Palm Beach Island — I mean, we’re the first building that you hit when you’re coming from Palm Beach Island. So we knew it was a phenomenal location for us, and we also knew that the neighborhood itself is really on the rise, and we think that we got in at just the right time, just as a lot of other hospitality brands are starting to migrate to the West Palm area.
Did you launch in West Palm Beach knowing you had plans for Montauk this summer?
JC: We’ve always had the idea of taking the Mary Lou’s brand to other markets, and Montauk was one of those on our list. Not necessarily one that we were really pushing to get a deal done, but it kind of just fell into our lap.
AM: Our mission in Mary Lou’s is simple. It’s to create spaces and moments that make people feel something, and provide a canvas for people to have a great experience and a great time and make memories. We look at markets that lean into that, and Montauk is certainly a perfect market for that. It wasn’t just, “Hey, we’re going to Montauk next.” But Montauk was certainly on our radar, the Hamptons were certainly on our radar, as well as other markets that are similar, such as Aspen, Nantucket and things of that nature.
“The town of East Hampton can put some hoops in front of you that you have to jump through, and we’ve jumped through them all.”
How did it fall into your lap?
AM: We’re very friendly with the owner of the building. He’s a good friend of ours, you know, from the Palm Beach area. The previous tenants are also dear friends of ours, from the Palm Beach area, who own great concepts, and are great developers within the market. Together, we all started to experience the Mary Lou’s culture within the Palm Beach market this year, and everybody felt like there was a great opportunity to come together and breathe new life into the space here in Montauk.
It seems like Mary Lou’s really captures this overlap between Palm Beach and the Hamptons. Both of these markets have really grown in this post-pandemic era. How do you think about that relationship between these markets?
JC: We’ve seen that migration, but we also see the Palm Beach, Jupiter, Boca-area migration to the Hamptons as well. Even if it’s for weeks at a time or monthly rentals. We have a lot of guests that have come into Mary Lou’s Montauk that have told us they have homes right down the road from the Montauk location and they’ve also been to the Palm Beach location.
AM: Both these markets really play hand-in-hand with each other. At the end of the day, Palm Beach and the Hamptons and Montauk, you know, they’re both affluent, they’re both aspirational, and they’re built around lifestyle, leisure and enjoyment, right? The people are vibrant, the colors are bold, the fashion is playful, and there’s an underlying sense of joy in the air, and those are the type of markets we like. They both have this mythical energy, it’s kind of like Gatsby by the beach for both Palm Beach and the Hamptons. The only thing that’s missing in some of these places is the space that gives people the permission to do it, and we want to provide that.
It was one of the stories of the summer last year that Scott Sartiano basically got run out of East Hampton trying to open a Zero Bond outpost. What do you need to be cognizant of, opening in a market that is known for some … hostility?
JC: We’re sympathetic to the idea that people have very particular memories growing up in Montauk. I myself have memories of coming out here when I was a lot younger, and I’ve seen the change in the town — you know, markets are supposed to change. Johnny Marlin is a great example. This guy owned the building for 22 years, and [now] he comes in every Thursday, because his granddaughter is one of our jazz singers on our live music nights. And this is a guy who’s been living in Montauk for, God, it’s got to be 40, 50 years now, and he’s coming in and he’s bringing his friends in.
AM: Montauk is built off of its culture, its local culture, its authenticity and the people that define it, right? That’s why it’s so cool. We have no intent of going in and changing it. We want to work with the town as much as possible, embrace the community, embrace the culture and embrace the locals.
It sounds like you’re really boiling it down to relationships. Is that what you have been focusing on so far, building a relationship with the local government, making sure you guys are all on the same page?
JC: Yeah, yeah, we cross our t’s, we dot our i’s when it comes to compliance out here. The town of East Hampton can put some hoops in front of you that you have to jump through, and we’ve jumped through them all. We plan on jumping through them all and not trying to break any of them down, which could be the downfall of some hospitality brands that come out here, where they try to do too much than makes sense for a beautiful fishing town.