Like most visitors to Harbour Island, Jorge Mora has loved the tiny island in the Bahamas for a long time. "I've been going for probably 27 years, and I've always been in love with the island, so when I was looking to do my first hotel, it's where I looked," he explains. He soon found an opportunity at Coral Sands, a beachfront property that had been renovated several times by several designers over the past few decades, each taking on one part of the hotel, which comprises two buildings of guest rooms as well as some 12 private bungalows. After Mora became co-owner alongside Silma and Tom Sherman,he pitched his partners on the idea of freshening up the space. Enter Eddie Lee, the New York-based designer who has worked on nearly all of Mora's residences.
Like Mora, this was Lee's first hotel project—a fact he found boosted his qualification for the task. "The other designers they considered had done hotels before, and I hadn’t, so their question was, 'why should we hire you?'" Lee recalls of his first meetings with the owners. "My whole push was that those other designers do hotels, I'm residential. This should feel like your beach home away from home." The pitch worked, and Lee set to work updating the hotel in a way that would reflect the island's beloved charm while also feeling fresh.
Tour the Coral Sands Hotel
"Surprisingly, the island hasn’t changed that much over these past 30 years," says Mora. And, most visitors don't have too big of a problem with that—by Harbour Island standards, Mora's 27 years as a visitor is chump change. "For those who love Harbour Island, they really love it," says Lee. "Families who go there with their kids go because they went with their parents as kids."
And those kinds of regulars tend to have their favorite spots. "The island is itny, but the main thing are the hotels," Lee explains. "The Dunmore, the Ocean View Club, the Landing. They each kind of have their own flavor: Landing is old-school British Bahamian, Dunmore is preppy WASPy, Ocean View is boho. What are we going to be?"
The answer, for Lee, lay in the one thing that all Harbour Island regulars (and all the owners of Coral Sands), regardless of hotel preference, can agree on: the island's natural beauty. "The island has this astonishingly beautiful beach—I don't think there's another one like it on this side of the world," Mora says.
And yet, Lee wanted to stay away from too literal a translation: "Before, there were a lot of seahorses and sand dollars," he explains. "You don’t need to hit people over the head with the beach theme. We get it, it’s the Bahamas. Just make it feel like it."
To do that, Lee drew his palette from the surroundings: the island's pink customs house, the first sight when arriving; the green palms; the blue ocean; the crimson sunsets—all of which, conveniently, make for a playful vibe that feels family-friendly, another important consideration for the hotel. "The whole idea was honoring the spirit of the colors of the island, but keeping it modern and fresh and not expected," the designer says. We're ready to book.
BOOK NOW Coral Sands Resort, Harbour Island, Bahamas
