City Inks Contract For Convention Center Hotel
<I>Miami Beach</I> - Construction of new convention property took a step closer to reality with last month's signing of a hotel deal between private developer R. Donahue Peebles and the city of Miami Beach.
The 425-room Royal Palm Crowne Plaza will be located just south of the new Loews Hotel site and an easy walk from the Miami Beach Convention Center.
Peebles' projects in southern Florida have been on a roll this spring, because almost at the same time the Royal Palm deal was signed, a county-hired consultant in nearby Broward County gave a favorable review to his proposal for a $53 million hotel adjacent to the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, 20 miles north of Miami Beach.
Both projects have run into hurdles over the past few years. Two years ago, Miami Beach chose another developer to construct a hotel next to the Loews. But the developer was unable to get financing for the project, and Peebles stepped in. After a dispute over the value of some of the land on which Peebles will build the hotel, a deal was finally worked out and ratified by the Miami Beach City Commission, by a vote of 5-1.
The deal is seen by many as a political triumph because the Miami hotel will be largest African-American owned convention property in the United States
Miami-area activists, many of whom participated in a three-year African-American boycott of Dade County tourism that ended in 1993, were present at the signing of the Royal Palm deal and said it represented a new level of minority participation in one of the area's biggest industries.
The hotel, which is set to open in December 1998, will be a two-building complex, with 258 guest rooms in the new Royal Palm building and 167 rooms in what was once the Shorecrest Hotel, which will be massively renovated.
Peebles' knack for breathing life into stalled projects also came into play with the Fort Lauderdale convention hotel project. In January, a deal between Broward County and the predominately black National Baptist Convention appeared near dead when the religious group, which has proposed building a hotel near the convention center, failed to submit financial statements, which Broward County commissioners insisted on inspecting before a contract could be inked.
About that time, Peebles stepped in, bringing about a coalition consisting of himself, the Baptist Group and Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts. Under the new proposal, Peebles and a partner would put up $1.5 million, the Baptist group would put up $2.3 million and Crowne Plaza Hotels would kick in $7 million. Another $43 million would be obtained through a bank loan, according to a Broward County-commissioned report conducted by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen.
Broward County Convention Center officials have said the facility suffers from the lack of a nearby convention hotel. The Crowne Plaza project proposed by Peebles and partners would be located on waterfront property next door to the convention center.