CLIENT NEWS: Miami Beach’s vanished, iconic Deauville Hotel is poised for an ‘even better’ return
March 24, 2025The improbable return of Miami Beach’s iconic Deauville Hotel, demolished by implosion in 2022, has come one big step closer to becoming reality.
And for North Beach residents and preservationists still reeling from the loss of the historic MiMo hotel, best known as a launching pad to fame for the Beatles, it’s like they can’t believe their luck.
In a public hearing that might well be described as a love fest, Beach residents and city commissioners ardently embraced an unusually ambitious plan from a developer that calls for building a close though not exact replica of the 1957 Deauville — with the addition of a pair of 40-story condo towers. A few dissenters, including one commissioner, decried the plan as a giveaway.
But a majority of the often-fractious commission and preservation-minded residents usually hostile to high-rise redevelopment schemes were sufficiently taken by the proposal from Terra Group’s David Martin to accept the twin towers — though hoping the developer will agree to reduce their height before approvals become final.
“I want to speak to you from my heart,” Richard Zaki, a resident of the neighboring Sterling condominium, told commissioners on Wednesday in remarks that echoed praise from most of the 32 members of the public who lined up to speak in person or by phone. “This project is brilliant.”
The 6-1 commission vote advanced the zoning application from Terra Group’s David Martin to a second and final hearing on April 23. The plan needs at least six favorable votes under city rules because it entails a significant increase in what can be built on the North Beach property under current zoning rules.
The lone “no” vote came from Commissioner David Suarez, who did not speak during the hearing but later issued a statement calling the plan “a non-starter.” He took aim at the Deauville property’s majority owners, the Meruelo family, who he noted accrued $8 million in still-unpaid fines from the city as they allowed the historic hotel to slide into ruin. Suarez said they should not be rewarded with what he called a “massive upzoning jackpot” that would disrupt the city’s urban scale.
The commission’s initial approval comes more than two years after Beach voters soundly rejected a proposal by the developer owner of the Miami Dolphins, Stephen Ross, to build two twisting towers on the site. The referendum was required at the time under a Beach law that subjected requests by developers like Ross for increases in floor-area ratio, a method of regulating building size, to voter approval.
That plan, designed by famed architect Frank Gehry, would have paid no design homage or made any reference to the Deauville as residents and preservationists wanted.
Two laws since passed by the Florida legislature to pre-empt local zoning regulations appeared to thwart those wishes.
The first allows owners of properties east of a coastal construction control line that runs along the beachfront to demolish them even if they are locally designated historic landmarks, with an exemption for long-established historic districts like the city’s Art Deco district. It also removed the authority of historic preservation boards to require a replication of or designs or elements paying tribute to those lost structures.
The Deauville was listed as a significant or “contributing” structure in its North Beach Resort Historic District.
The second law banned local referendums on land regulations like the vote that defeated Ross’ plan.
But Beach commissioners in response upped the required board majority to approve increases in floor-area ratio from five to six of seven commissioners. And then Martin voluntarily offered to rebuild the missing Deauville in exchange for authorization to build luxury condo towers on the four-acre site, one of the largest beachfront parcels in the city, to help finance the extensive project.
Martin and his team of prominent architects have since held numerous and lengthy meetings with city officials, neighbors, preservationists, North Beach business owners and other interested parties as they refined the plan in response to requests and concerns, eventually winning near-universal plaudits.
Also enticing to supporters are projections by Terra that the completed project would contribute $388 million over 25 years to the city’s North Beach Community Redevelopment Agency, which plows property tax revenue from new construction in the area back into neighborhood-improvement projects, as well as the promise of 228 full-time jobs at the reopened Deauville.
Unlike other city neighborhoods, North Beach has seen relatively little redevelopment or much in the way of renovations to its aging if often historic stock of apartments and commercial buildings. The loss of the Deauville and its approximately 560 rooms has hit neighborhood businesses that rely on tourists especially hard.
“It is a project that improves the quality of life for every resident of North Beach,” Beach Vice-Mayor Tanya Bhatt, a longtime preservationist, said before casting her “yes” vote for the Terra zoning plan. “The money alone is so staggeringly community-changing, it’s irresponsible to think about it any other way.”
The project sill has a long way to go. Negotiations over height and additional community benefits will take place before a second commission vote on the upzoning. Then the design must be reviewed by the city’s historic preservation board, which can’t limit the scope of construction because of state pre-emptions, but retains authority to ensure the project is generally compatible with its historic neighbors.
Local and federal preservation standards also generally discourage replicas of historic buildings as ersatz preservation. Terra’s contemplated new Deauville won’t be an exact replica, its architect Allan Shulman says, but a “reinterpretation” that, at least from curbside on Collins Avenue, will nonetheless look very much like the old one.
Some speakers on Wednesday raised other concerns, including worries about the impact of lengthy and noisy construction and the scale of the requested upzoning, which could double the allowable height on the site. One neighbor asked commissioners to demand more in public benefits from the developers.
Another recalled bitterly that Martin had demolished a building nearby that was designed in part by famed Beach architect Morris Lapidus, designer of the Fontainebleau Hotel, to build the Eighty-Seven Park luxury condo.
Suarez, the commissioner, and resident Peter Vanderlee said the floor-area increase sets a poor precedent that will encourage other developers to follow suit.
“This ask is a huge ask and the precedent it sets is very damaging for the future of this area,” Vanderlee told commissioners.
But most other speakers thought the trade-off broadly beneficial. David Sharps, who lives at the neighboring Sterling condo, said he “struggled” with the proposal because it will block his views, but he was persuaded to support it by Martin’s open and deliberate approach.
The developer, he said, “has jumped through every hoop possible to alleviate the concerns of the community.”
There is also still one outsize sticking point to be resolved.
Many residents and officials blame the destruction of the Deauville on its longtime owners, the Meruelo family, saying they deliberately allowed the hotel to fall into disrepair to expedite its demolition. The Meruelos closed the resort in 2017 following an electrical fire, and it sat vacant until its 2022 demolition. Beach building officials declared the hotel unsafe.
Terra last year purchased a 25 percent interest in the property for $12.8 million, but the Meruelos remain the majority owners and are partners in the redevelopment project.
Some project supporters say they are reluctant to see the Meruelos financially rewarded. One resident called the family “toxic” during the hearing. City commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and Beach Vice-Mayor Bhatt seconded the thought.
“They are not good eggs. I hate the money they are going to make on this,” Bhatt said, but added that the city is in “final negotiations to collect what they owe.”
No one spoke on behalf of the family at the hearing.
If the Terra plan wins city approvals and financing in an uncertain environment in which many lenders have tightened their purse strings, the Beach aims to get high-end design from a top Miami architect and a firm with a global reputation.
Shulman’s Miami firm is noted for designing numerous renovations and expansions of historic buildings on the Beach and mainland Miami, and is overseeing design of the replacement Deauville. UK-based Foster + Partners, the firm of star architect Norman Foster, is designing the towers.
The slender residential towers would taper up from the Deauville’s reconstructed and reinterpreted covered concourse and would contain about 120 luxury condo units. Splitting the condo component into two thin, tall towers rather than a single block, Martin and his architects say, reduces their visual impact significantly. The towers would also be set well back from the beachfront and Collins Avenue, reducing shadow effects to a minimum.
The rebuilt hotel would have just about 150 rooms. In sum, that’s far less density on the site than the 1,000 units existing zoning allows for, Martin told the commissioners.
The splashy and expansive Deauville Hotel, designed by prolific and influential Beach resort architect Melvin Grossman, replaced the earlier and in its day equally famous Deauville Casino, a “health resort” in the style of a grand hotel.
The newer Deauville, its restaurants, shops and nightclubs were an enduring draw for locals and tourists, anchoring the mostly low-scale North Beach neighborhood for decades. Its Napoleon Ballroom hosted the Beatles’ second consecutive blockbuster live appearance on the Ed Sullivan television show in 1964. The Beatles stayed on the hotel’s 11th floor.
The mid-rise hotel tower was built at the north end of the property over a long pedestal housing a soaring, double-height lobby and a vast, covered esplanade of amenities. The pedestal had an unusual feature for the drive-in resorts of the day: A sidewalk arcade of shops and restaurants that enlivened street life on Collins Avenue.
The new version of the Deauville follows the template closely, architect Shulman said in an interview. Martin’s initial idea was to do a faithful replication based on original construction blueprints, photos and films.
But the team soon realized that tweaks and significant improvements were necessary, in large part to accommodate neighbors’ wishes, Shulman said.
The famous lobby will be reproduced, and the sidewalk arcade will return, but with more space for covered outdoor seating. So will its most cherished feature: The arched concrete entrance canopy adorned with the hotel’s name and distinctive font. The dining rooms and clubs, meanwhile, will return but with improved, modernized designs and layouts and better views to the outside.
The new hotel tower would still sit on the same spot as the original, but will be slimmer, Shulman said. That’s because the old one came right up to the property line. To accommodate neighbors; desire for a xx-foot setback, Shulman’s design shaves off the tower’s north flank. But the new tower will retain the original’s look and overall mass and design, he said.
The ground-level pool, however, won’t come back. It will be replaced instead with a lush garden square open to the public, with pools for the hotel and condos going on the pedestal roof. Two other big improvements are appealingly designed, covered and landscaped public access walks connecting Collins to the beach at the north and south ends of the property — features that did not previously exist.
The new complex would also meet current standards for hurricane storm surge and resiliency.
“We can’t necessarily build back what was there, though that was our first intention. But it will look like it used to, and that’s critical,” Shulman said. “It was a landmark in North Beach. It’s going to be something that has the DNA of the Beach, of Melvin Grossman, of the resorts on Collins Avenue, all baked into it.
Daniel Ciraldo, executive director of the Miami Design Preservation League, told commissioners that the proposed new Deauville improves on the original while retaining its singular look and feel.
“He really designed a beautiful building,” Ciraldo said, referring to Shulman. “It’s not an exact reproduction. In some ways, it’s ever better.“
