On Collins Avenue in South Beach, along a strip of jazzy historic mid-century high-rise hotels that have defined the city skyline for decades, two giants are going at it. And the outcome of their long-running battle could forever alter the look and feel of a landmark Miami Beach district that harks back to the city’s Golden Age. Whether that’s for the good for the future of highly popular but perennially troubled South Beach, or a harbinger of its continued erosion, is the gist of the dispute.
The Godzilla vs. Kong clash of the icons pits the billionaire owners of , a late-Art Deco period gem, against the wealthy partners who own two other landmark hotels next door, the ultra-luxe and the much smaller, adjacent , both exemplars of . The Ritz-Carlton and Sagamore owners have teamed up on a controversial behind the beachfront hotels that’s starkly taller and bulkier than the originals around it.
But that’s only part of their plan. In a successful play for city approval after their proposal was twice rejected by the Beach’s historic preservation board, the Ritz-Sagamore team drew up a $12 million offer — with $4 million coming from the hotel owners and twice as much from local and state taxpayers — to remake a single block of Lincoln Road that also happens to be the Ritz-Carlton’s front entrance. The deal was explicitly conditioned on city approval of the condo tower, which came when the preservation board reversed itself last year.
Few dispute that the 100 block of Lincoln Road, which is also one of the busiest pedestrian entryways to the beach in the city, could use significant sprucing up. The historic hotel strip itself has been in a tough down cycle following the closure of some of its marquee stars, including the renown Delano, with some owners pursuing controversial expansion plans to reopen. On the beach end of Lincoln Road, puddling from rainstorms is common.
The brick paving and landscaping look worn and dated. The street’s three easternmost blocks have been plagued with vagrancy, sidewalk drug sales and petty crime since the COVID-19 pandemic, in part because of numerous vacant hotels and shopfronts in the area. But the National owners, members of one of France’s wealthiest families, have hired squads of attorneys, including one of the largest U.
S. law firms, to thwart their neighbors’ scheme. In a rare move, they have gone to court to challenge the city’s approval of their rivals’ plan, contending that municipal officials violated their own famously stringent preservation rules to do so.
Oral arguments in the National’s long-shot appeal are set for September. The National’s managing director, Stephane Mercier, says the proposed 30-unit tower would not just cast shadows over the beach and his hotel’s long, narrow pool area, but disrupt the historic skyline and sightlines the city’s historic preservation law is meant to protect. And he contends that what he referred to as a “quid pro quo” deal with the city over Lincoln Road benefits the Sagamore and Ritz-Carlton far more than it does the neighborhood, which is part of Miami Beach’s , or the Beach as a whole.
“You are going to benefit from $8 million from the taxpayers to improve your own front entrance. It’s a cheap way for the city to get some private financing, but you don’t sacrifice what makes Miami Beach special for 30 residences for very wealthy people,” Mercier said. “You are sacrificing the heritage of everybody in the city.
“We have to convince the city not to allow a tower next to the Eiffel Tower,” he said, meaning The National. The Ritz-Sagamore owners, operating as partners in Sobe Sky Development, say critics are greatly exaggerating the impact of the planned tower, which they contend will have only an “incremental effect” in shading and blocking views on surrounding properties, including their own. And they say their deal over Lincoln Road is necessary because the city can’t solve the district’s problems without help from private-sector actors like themselves.
Publicly, in fact, they are doubling down by expanding their Lincoln Road plans. They have submitted conceptual blueprints to the city for redesigning, closing and pedestrianizing the 200 and 300 blocks of the street that connect to the start of the famed Lincoln Road pedestrian mall at Washington Avenue. Although they have no economic interests on those blocks and aren’t proposing to help pay for those improvements, the Sobe Sky partners also suggested to the city that it provide zoning and other incentives for local property owners to rebuild taller and incorporate housing in any redevelopment.
Those “seedy” blocks need all the help they can get, and bringing in new residents, including in their own proposed condo, is the only way to chase away vagrants and street criminals and help local businesses that have been struggling or closing to flourish instead, said Peter Kanavos, a partner in the ownership group. That serves his own interests, he conceded, noting that some guests at Ritz-Carlton, where room rates can top $1,000 a night, complain or don’t come back because of what he called the “gnarly” environment. But turning that around by bringing in more residents and upgrading the street is key to securing the future of South Beach and reversing the city’s ongoing loss of population, Kanavos argues.
“We are long-term players here and we care what happens to the city. We can’t be an island of luxury in the middle of a situation that was declining,” Kanavos said. “I don’t want to be a jewel among junk.
We’ve been sitting on a ticking time bomb. Homeless people and drugs thrive in that climate. “We’ll be bringing in the multi-millionaires and the billionaires.
That’s fine. But you have to have a balance. We can have a public-private partnership where the public gains significantly and the developer can build something the city needs.
That stabilizes our district. The city gains more than we do.” The clash has put the city’s vocal and influential preservationists in a bind.
Leaders of the , which opposes the Ritz-Sagamore tower, say they have long supported proposals to transform and expand landmark properties to ensure their economic vitality, but not at the risk of spoiling the consistency of scale that defines the city’s historic districts. Moreover, they say, it’s not clear why a condo with just 30 units, many of them probably to be occupied just part-time, would solve anything. “Whether building a new tower is going to be a saving grace, it’s unclear,” said MDPL executive director Daniel Ciraldo.
”The National has this beautiful pool and garden set back very deep on the lot. Now you have the Sagamore saying we will build something very big next door. It’s very contentious.
And it puts us in a difficult position. These are two landmarks in our city and generate considerable economic value. But we don’t want one property owner’s needs to impact the economic viability of the other.
“And it’s not just the architecture people want to preserve, but also the beachfront on a human scale. Light and air, the views,” Ciraldo said. “That block is just so iconic to the skyline of Miami Beach.
” The evolution of the two blocks of Collins north of Lincoln Road where the battling hotels sit represents some pivotal points in Miami Beach history and set the table for the present imbroglio. Until World War II, the strip, which lies just north of the mostly modest Art Deco and Streamline Moderne hotels that line Ocean Drive and Collins and Washington Avenues, was like much of the city’s beachfront home to winter estates for millionaire industrialists from the North and Midwest. Just before and immediately after the war, hotel developers began buying the estates, knocking down the mansions that occupied them, and building bigger, taller hotels that eventually led to the even grander resorts of the 1950s to the north, like the Fontainebleau, as Miami Beach entered its mid-century peak as a vacation hotspot.
The buildings on the strip, designed by leading architects of the day, reflect the transition. They range from the simplified Art Deco of the 1940 National and its cupola, designed by Roy France, and the 1947 Delano and its rooftop tower fins, to the stripped-down approach of the emerging Modern era, a style the 1948 Sagamore and the 1953 DiLido — later transformed into the Ritz-Carlton — fully embraced. The DiLido was designed by a young Morris Lapidus while he was an associate in Melvin Grossman’s firm.
Once on his own, Lapidus designed the Fountainebleau and the next-door Eden Roc farther up Collins. On the corner, the rounded commercial building, One Lincoln Road, another example of MiMo designed by Igor Polevitzky, housed Wolfie’s famous deli. The hotel row went into a steep decline along with the rest of Miami Beach starting in the 1960s, until the South Beach revival, fueled by the creation of the Art Deco historic district, took off in the 1980s.
Most of the Collins strip hotels then received extensive renovations in subsequent years. Most famously, the Delano’s high-design interior makeover in the 1980s by French star Phillipe Starck launched South Beach as a glitzy destination for celebrities and the affluent. The National was restored in 1996 and again in 2014 under the ownership of the late Claude Dray, one of France’s richest men.
During the pandemic, it closed briefly to be fitted out lavishly with period Art Deco furnishings. The five-story Sagamore, meanwhile, added rooms to the rear and a penthouse on top in 1998, then gained a new reputation as the Art Hotel under the guidance of the Taplin family, prominent contemporary art collectors who installed rotating exhibitions in the lobby and hallways. The DiLido received the most thorough remake of the bunch when it was expanded and turned into the Ritz-Carlton in 2000.
The original tower was stopped off by three new floors sheathed in black glass and physically combined with the three-story commercial corner building, while pool cabanas, a parking garage and a beach club were built at the rear. But as tastes and hospitality trends shifted, another down cycle exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic struck the strip and left some of its architectural stars dimmed or fully darkened. The Taplin family sold the Sagamore to avoid foreclosure.
The Delano was shuttered amid ownership turnover and stripped of Starck’s designs in 2020, the same year the Shore Club, another celebrity magnet a block to the north, also closed. Next door, the Raleigh, an Art Deco tower some regard as the strip’s crown jewel, was closed by owner Tommy Hilfiger, the designer, after damage from Hurricane Irma in 2017. Ultra-luxe transitions Now the strip is in the midst of yet another transition, and new towers and ultra-luxury conversions are driving the planned transformation of several of its signature resorts.
New owners of the Delano — who have also publicly opposed the size of the Ritz-Sagamore tower at the other end of the block — have just started on a $100 million renovation of their hotel, without any additions. But two other renovation projects, at the Shore Club and the Raleigh, include also-controversial tower additions that set the stage for the flap over the Ritz-Sagamore plan. The Shore Club project recently got underway with demolition and land preparation for construction of an 18-story, 200-foot-tall residential tower.
The Raleigh sits fully gutted, awaiting by brash New York developer Michael Shvo for a top-to-bottom restoration that include a 17-story condo tower behind the adjacent facade shells of two smaller Art Deco hotels. Hilfiger had started on a gut renovation, but sold to Shvo for $103 million. Shvo’s Raleigh project, in fact, serves as the legal precedent for the Ritz-Sagamore plan.
He persuaded the city that bringing the treasured Raleigh back to its original Art Deco glory required an ambitious plan — combining the property with two smaller Art Deco hotels next door and building luxury condos behind them. The Beach commission, led by then-Mayor Dan Gelber, approved a zoning measure that allows towers up to 200 feet tall behind historic hotels on the strip, but it was tailored so that only hotel owners with large properties would qualify, specifically the Raleigh and the Shore Club. Preservationists, desperate not to lose the Raleigh, supported the measure.
What no one expected was that the Ritz-Carlton and Sagamore owners would legally join their properties to also qualify for a tower, said the MDPL’s Ciraldo. “It’s become a flashpoint. In a way it’s a cautionary tale,” Ciraldo said.
“When you change zoning without a master plan, there can be unintended consequences, which is what’s going on now.” The Rtiz-Sagamore owners first submitted the tower proposal to the city in 2021, only to be rejected by the preservation board. The board also rejected a second, slightly altered application in April 2022.
The group then went back to the city with a deal supported by Gelber and brokered in part by city commissioner Alex Fernandez. The commission approved a term sheet drawn up by the Ritz-Sagamore owners, who hired consultants to devise a conceptual plan for the redesign and reconstruction of the 100 block of Lincoln Road. The plan includes new water and sewer lines with more capacity to cope with flooding and sea level rise driven by climate change, new landscaping and a new alignment for better traffic circulation and pedestrian safety, Kanavos said.
The proposal also envisions public art installations, a small new park at the beachwalk and an arched gateway at the end of the street designed by Lapidus for a scheme to extend the pedestrian mall that was never realized. The hotel owners’ Lincoln Road proposal also won the approval for the broader project from the condo board at the massive Decoplage tower across the street from the Ritz-Carlton, although some residents continue to object to the planned tower because it will obstruct their views to the north. The Ritz-Sagamore group paid $615,000 to the Decoplage association to cover the cost of redoing the 625-unit condo’s main entranceway to mesh with the street reconstruction plan, association president Ingrite Pujol said.
The 1965 building is undergoing renovations for its 40-year recertification and cannot afford the entry redesign, while a survey of owners showed majority support for the neighboring project, she said. “Lincoln Road has been forgotten by the city. After COVID it got really, really bad.
The street looks old and ugly,” Pujol said in an interview. “When we heard about the project, we got every excited. When there is the private sector involved things get done, and get done nicely.
For the association and our community as a whole, we all walk that street and that was a miracle for us. “It will give life again to the area. Hopefully we change the type of people who are coming to the area.
We want to see this area shine again.” Fernandez, who has been working closely with Kanavos’ group on the Lincoln Road plans, declined a request for an interview, citing the pending litigation. But he emailed a broad statement in response to questions from the Miami Herald emphasizing the “desperate need for revitalization” of the street, noting it’s been decades since the 100 block was renovated.
He called the financial deal “a highly beneficial return on the city’s investment and a significant opportunity towards transforming this area into the iconic, safe, resilient, and beautiful beach entrance that our city deserves.” “This project is about more than just physical improvements - it’s about building community and creating opportunities,” the statement says. “I’m excited to working with property owners who share my broader vision for the east end of Lincoln Road - those who see beyond the current challenges and recognize the great potential to pedestrianize and transform this area into a vibrant community with full time residents all the way to Washington Avenue.
This redevelopment and my broader vision will not only beautify the area but will hopefully provide much-needed long-term housing which plays a crucial role in supporting the economy of the immediate area.” After commissioners approved the term sheet, municipal elections in November brought in a reconstituted commission, That led to a change in the composition of the preservation board, the majority of whose members are appointed by the mayor and commissioners. Two leading opponents of the Ritz-Carlton tower on the preservation board, including longtime member and former chairman Jack Finglass, left, changing the dynamics to favor the proposal.
On the third try, over two often-contentious public hearings in the fall of 2023, the Ritz-Sagamore owners won the board’s approval by a 5-1 vote. The owners, who had previously reduced the tower’s height to 183 feet -- still some 60 feet taller than the National -- agreed to a board request that the blocky new building step back 15 feet after the fifth story in order to reduce its visual impact, but otherwise the proposal is virtually identical to the previously rejected plans. The city’s preservation chief, Deborah Tackett, told the board that because the tower would sit well off Collins Avenue, or about 300 feet back, its impact on the historic skyline from the street — a critical preservation standard — would be imperceptible to passers-by.
The beach side, however, is not protected by city preservation rules, she said. The approved plan calls for demolition of the cabanas behind the Sagamore to make way for the tower, which would also cantilever over the Ritz-Carlton cabanas., straddling both properties.
The Sagamore penthouse would be removed, restoring its facade to its original condition, and the building gutted to allow for fewer but larger rooms that can command higher rates. A skybridge would connect the Sagamore and former DiLido, turning them into one combined hotel operation as the expanded Ritz-Carlton South Beach. After a special master working for the city to adjudicate zoning and administrative disputes ruled against the National in February, the hotel’s owners then filed a challenge with the appellate division of the Miami-Dade Circuit Court.
The appeal argues that the city and preservation board failed to detail as required by law how precisely the tower proposal meets criteria designed to ensure that new construction is compatible in scale, size and massing with historic buildings, in this case the far smaller Sagamore. “In this case, you’re stapling a 15-story condo to a five-story historic building,” the National’s appellate attorney, Larry Silverman, of the giant firm of Sidley Austin, said in an interview. “Our position is you can’t do that.
” Silverman also contends the board violated his clients’ rights to due process because it refused to allow their hearing attorneys to cross-examine architect Kobi Karp and other members of the Ritz-Sagamore team. Their brief asks the court to void the board decision and send the matter back to the panel for reconsideration. In their response, the Ritz-Sagamore’s attorneys, from the heavyweight Miami land-use and lobbying firm Bercow Radell Fernandez Larkin & Tapanes, said the city and the Ritz-Carlton’s consultants provided sufficient evidence of compatibility and the National’s attorneys waited until too late in the hearings to ask to cross-examine them.
The city has yet to approve a formal agreement with the Ritz-Sagamore group on the Lincoln Road plan, a city spokeswoman said. The approved term sheet does also allow Kanavos’ group to walk away at any time if the city doesn’t approve the tower or other elements of the plan are not to their liking. Kanavos did secure a $4.
85 million appropriation in the state budget from the Florida Legislature in this year’s session after working with GOP State Rep. Vicki Lopez of Miami. He said the expense by the state is justified because the fate of South Beach will play a big part in Florida’s tourism future.
“I kind of convinced them that Lincoln Road, which is a national historic district, is critical to the economy of Miami Beach, and Miami Beach is critical to the economy of Florida, and that there are certain steps we have to take,” Kanavos said. “We’ve had a strong preservation movement. It’s about time now that we think about how we’re going to look and function 10 years down the line.
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