Construction begins at former Club Orient site
Nearly nine years after Hurricane Irma erased it, a new naturist resort is rising at the southern end of Orient Bay
Nearly nine years after Hurricane Irma flattened Club Orient, ground has been broken on its replacement. Developers, Collectivité officials, and former Club Orient staff gathered last week on the old property for a ceremonial groundbreaking—the first visible work at a site that has sat in ruins since 2017.
Club Orient opened in the 1980s on the French side of Saint Martin, developed by Reint Brink and his family into a family naturist resort. It grew into one of the best-known clothing-optional destinations anywhere: red pine chalets imported from Finland, paths that wandered between the units, a beach you could walk onto the moment you arrived and never dress again until you left. For decades it was a fixture of Caribbean naturist travel.
That ended in September 2017, when Irma tore across Saint Martin. The resort was destroyed and never reopened. The debris, by most accounts, is still there.
In the years since, redevelopment plans surfaced, stalled, and changed hands. The beach stayed busy with nudists, and a stripped-down beach bar kept the spot running, but the resort itself went nowhere.
The pieces moved this spring. Last year the Collectivité put out a call for expressions of interest on the two public parcels where Club Orient stood; two companies bid, and in April the executive council selected SAS Griselle, authorizing a 60-year lease. The project now styles itself La Griselle, though the Daily Herald reported at the groundbreaking that the hotel’s name had not been finalized. Its principals know the ground: president Steven Patrick, a former Collectivité vice president; Christine Page, once a waitress and later assistant manager at Club Orient’s Papagayo restaurant, now on as consultant and coordinator; and US government representative Lloyd Tackling, tasked with bringing in investors. The figure behind it all is Stephen Payne, an experienced hotelier and former director of the neighboring Orient Beach Club, who arrived on the island in 1985 and has spent the eight years since Irma trying to rebuild. “I’ve been working on this for seven years,” Payne told the Daily Herald. The post-storm Natural Risk Prevention Plan (PPRN), which came in while he was still on the island, was the wall he kept hitting.
The new resort won’t be a copy of the old Club Orient. The PPRN regulations reshaped what’s allowed along the shoreline, including a mandatory setback from the water, so the chalet village is gone for good. “The chalets concept offered a real sense of community but with the PPRN we can’t do that anymore,” Payne said. In its place: a five-star naturist hotel of three or four buildings with oversized balconies and sea views. The €41 million Griselle committed in its bid is what won over the Collectivité; Tackling put the full project cost at €49 to €55 million. Collectivité President Louis Mussington framed the case for rebuilding plainly—an exclusive niche drawing guests from around the world, and what he called the only legitimate family naturist resort in the Caribbean.
The site still has to be demolished and cleared before real construction starts, and the projected timeline puts an opening roughly three years out. But for the first time since Irma, there’s work happening on the ground at Club Orient. 🪐