Down the street from the Red Lobster and the shuttered Broadway theaters, a large model of Jimmy Buffett’s seaplane, Hemisphere Dancer, was being uncrated inside his brand-new 32-story hotel. It was 14 weeks before the grand opening of the Margaritaville Resort Times Square, and there was much to do: Lumber and scaffolding were everywhere, and walls of hand-painted palm trees were being touched up. Many of the 234 guest bathrooms were still waiting for their whale-tail faucets. “Ahoy!” shouted a masked worker rolling a giant compass toward the lobby where, hiding under a tarp, was a 32-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty, hoisting a margarita to the blue skies ahead.

The development, which cost almost $370 million and will have taken more than three years to complete when it opens in July, is a treasure map of Buffett brands. Up the lobby escalators, tourists and curious locals will find the 5 O’Clock Somewhere bar and the License to Chill cocktail lounge. A Margaritaville restaurant, garnished in tikis and surfboards, will serve Cheeseburgers in Paradise, and, by the heated outdoor pool, bartenders at the LandShark grill will be pouring LandShark Lagers, the beer Buffett brews with Anheuser‑Busch InBev SA.

Even those who aren’t fanatics of Buffett’s music probably have some vague sense of the Margaritaville lifestyle, which refers to both the hit song—No. 1 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart in 1977—and its steelpan-inflected vibe, synonymous with slightly baked Floridians searching for that lost shaker of salt. That this mindset also happens to be the antithesis of the pandemic lifestyle is why Buffett is so excited about the project, even after a year of quarantine-related delays. “On the island of Manhattan, as we’re coming out of the pandemic, this is a lucky charm that says it’s time to go back out and have fun again,” Buffett says. “When you can’t go out and soothe the savage beast, you got problems.”

In the 24 years since Buffett founded Margaritaville Enterprises LLC, the company that manages his brand and intellectual property, he’s offered Parrotheads, as his disciples are known, as well as the Parrot-curious, an ever-increasing menu of savage-beast-soothing options. There are luxury resorts, retirement villages, $500 daiquiri makers, Growing Older But Not Up pickleball paddles, lime-wedge-shaped pool floats, salad dressings, casinos, water parks, RV camps, and, where legal, a line of cannabis goods developed with an heir of the Wrigley’s gum fortune. (The Surfin’ in a Hurricane vape pen goes for $35 and can “bring sunshine to your stormy day with significant euphoric effects.”)