1674-2-Bennett M. Lifter A
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mh CASINO BACKER CONVERTING HOTELS TO CONDOS 11/19/1986
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1986, The Miami Herald
DATE: Wednesday, November 19, 1986 EDITION: FINAL
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: 1B LENGTH: 63 lines
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: DEBBIE SONTAG Herald Staff Writer
CASINO BACKER CONVERTING HOTELS TO CONDOS
Hotelier Bennett Lifter, who poured $265,000 into the failed campaign to
legalize casino gambling, said Tuesday that he will convert the Marco Polo and
Waikiki hotels in Sunny Isles to condominiums.
"We're not changing to be spiteful because gambling went down," Lifter
said. "We have to. Tourism is on the way out. This is the last resort before
shutting down completely."
Lifter is also in the final stages of selling one of Miami Beach's
formerly grand hotels, the Sans Souci, 3101 Collins Ave., to a kosher hotel
operator. The Sans Souci, with no mortgage, has been losing $500,000 a year,
he said. Lifter converted the neighboring Versailles Hotel to a condominium
three years ago and its 274 rooms are almost all sold.
"I never dreamed this could happen in a community blessed by the greatest
natural resources, " Lifter said. "I thought this was like a national park of
tourism that would be preserved with all the embellishments a great vacation
spot deserves."
Half the 509 rooms in the Marco Polo and half the 342 rooms in the
Waikiki will go on sale this winter for $30,000 to $40,000 a unit, $1,000
down. The Metro Commission must approve Lifter's plans.
The conversion of Lifter's hotels will bring to 2,000 the number of rooms
that have been sold as condos in Sunny Isles, once a hopping, neon-flashing
tourist strip known as Motel Row.
"I don't like to see it at all, but the reason is obvious," said Stephen
Nostrand, chairman of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. "There
are no more traditional leisure guests coming to use those facilities. We will
never be what we were. The pendulum has swung toward convention business."
Lifter built the Waikiki, 18801 Collins Ave., in 1955 and the Marco Polo,
19201 Collins Ave., for $11 million in 1968.
"In those days, we didn't have to compete with the islands, the cruise
ships, the big gambling operations," Lifter said. "Nowadays, no matter how
cheap the rates are, Miami Beach is not what the people are looking for. We've
been trying to tell the world we're great, but they don't accept what we say."
Lifter said the Marco Polo is not failing, but it's not profitable as a
hotel. Occupancy at the Marco Polo has been steady at about 65 percent, the
level most hotels need to break even. Many guests, however, are retired,
staying for a month or more at about $15 a day.
Lifter and other hoteliers, saying gambling could be their salvation,
spent more than $3 million on a drive to legalize it. Statewide, voters
overwhelming defeated the gambling referendum. In Dade County, it passed by a
slim margin. In Sunny Isles, it passed resoundingly, by at least 10 percent of
the vote in three out of four precincts.
Before November, Sunny Isles developers selling rooms as condos lured
buyers with the promise that the legalization of gambling could make their
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investment multiply. Lifter said he thinks there is a market for his rooms
without using gambling as bait.
BOP Inc. , a firm that converted 950 rooms in Sunny Isles to condos, has
been successful in attracting local Latins who buy vacation rooms in motels
renamed Varadero after the popular beach resort in Cuba.
County law requires Sunny Isles' converted motels to maintain a front
desk and lobby. Unit owners cannot live year- round in the hotel rooms. And
many who buy rooms rent them out, so that the conversion does not
automatically change the nature of the strip to purely residential.
"I wish they'd all go condo," said Chuck Rosen, director of the Sunny
Isles Resort Association. "It doesn't mean tourism is dead. It's just
mutating."
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