Socialites originally established the Potlatch Club hotel in Eleuthera, but social media, in part, helped bring it back to life.
In 1958, wealthy New York socialites purchased the property, once a private home, and turned it into a boutique hotel that hosted celebrity guests like Greta Garbo and Paul McCartney, who honeymooned there with first wife, Linda, and wrote the Beatles song “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” on hotel stationary. However, the property, under lax management, shuttered and fell into disrepair in the 1980s.
Enter high school friends Bruce Loshusan and Hans Febles. The two had lost touch for several years before reconnecting on social media. Febles, posting photos from the Berry Islands, encouraged Loshusan to visit the Bahamas, and the two of them ultimately planned a hotel venture there that never got off the ground.
“We wanted to find another place in the Bahamas to do a project, and that’s what led us to Eleuthera,” Loshusan recalled.
Polishing up the Potlatch
In 2016 the high school friends learned of the property, which was in need of much attention, and purchased it. Febles handled the landscaping, and interior touches were provided by Nassau-based interior designer Amanda Lindroth. Some original construction was retained, such as the original clubhouse and its black-and-white, checkered floors and classic, whitewashed arches.
Renovating existing cottages and suites, the team added new villas and introduced such amenities as a central beach pavilion that serves as a central meeting point as well as a spa and a gym. Guestroom interiors received pink coral stone floors and bathrooms, designer furniture and artwork that combine to add an upscale yet relaxed, beachy look.
The hotel offers three suites, three garden cottages, three ocean-facing cottages and a one-bedroom and a four-bedroom villa, which includes butler service. Some of the accommodations feature private verandas and terraces, and others have shoreline pavilions.
During the hotel’s redevelopment, Loshusan said guests from the late ’50s and early ’60s contacted him, pleading for the new owners to keep the hotel’s integrity, something he feels they were able to keep mostly intact.
“We didn’t want to come in with a bulldozer, flatten all the sand and flatten all the trees and then start from scratch,” Loshusan said. “That actually would have been much easier and probably more cost-effective, but we decided to work with the [property] because that tells a story, too.”
Big plans for a small hotel
Eleuthera remains, for now, a secluded region of the Bahamas, with miles of deserted, pink-sand beaches and undisturbed trails. As such, the property is not conducive to holding a larger resort.
“We always knew that we wanted the hotel to be boutique,” Loshusan said. “We wanted it to be manageable. We wanted it to be small and intimate and personal, and very private. We’re setting the bar as high as we possibly can for the hotel, the amenities, the food and beverage program and the type of curated personalized services that we’re going to offer to guests.”
The Potlatch Club is slated to open June 15, although it is currently talking reservations. Low-season (June to November) rates start at $475 per night for a Garden View Room. The hotel is 20 minutes from Governor’s Harbour Airport, which offers direct flights from Miami on American, and an hour from North Eleuthera Airport, where American and Silver Airways offer daily service from Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Nassau.