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1675-11 New Hotels THE MIAMI HERALD Copyright (c) 1992, The Miami Herald DATE: Sunday, September 20, 1992 EDITION: FINAL SECTION: NEIGHBORS MB PAGE: 3 LENGTH: 54 lines SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: DAVID KIDWELL Herald Staff Writer A LONGER OCEAN DRIVE WINS FAVOR ON BEACH A new idea to extend Ocean Drive north, weaving it through old and new hotels that would complement the Miami Beach Convention Center, won unanimous support Friday from a Miami Beach advisory committee. Both historic preservationists and longtime proponents of a large convention center hotel agreed on the plan, designed to attract a major hotel developer to Miami Beach. "This is historic," said City Manager Roger Carlton. "It's a great step forward. " The concept would extend Ocean Drive one block north to 16th Street, instead of 15th Street, where it now ends. The idea is to create a village-type hotel complex, bordered by 16th Street to the north, 15th street to the south, Collins Avenue to the west and the extended Ocean Drive to the east. The plan calls for a large 750-room convention headquarters hotel on the north side of 16th Street. Three historic hotels on Collins Avenue -- the Bancroft, Royal Palm and St. Moritz hotels -- would be renovated and upgraded to form the western border. To camouflage the rear of these hotels, smaller four- to six-story properties would be built along the extended Ocean Drive from 15th to 16th streets. These properties could accommodate retail outlets and nightclubs on the ground floor, and hotel rooms upstairs, much like the historic hotels along Ocean Drive. The concept was presented Friday at a meeting of a hotel development advisory committee formed to forge a compromise between historic preservationists and those who have advocated a large 1,500-room hotel tower. Tourism officials say it is difficult to book the newly expanded convention center without a top-quality convention headquarters hotel within walking distance. "I'm excited about it, " said Tony Goldman, chairman of the Ocean Drive Association, a merchants' group. "I think it's great. It's a far better approach than having a monolith at the end of the street." The compromise agreed upon Friday marks an important first step toward getting the support necessary to attract a hotel developer, Carlton said. The support includes about $5 million per year in public subsidies, he said. Plans call for that money to come from an additional 1 percent hotel bed tax which is on the Nov. 3 ballot, future resort taxes generated by the hotel itself, and future property tax revenue in the surrounding neighborhood. The $5 million per year is enough to take out $50 million in bonds for such items as parking garages, street improvements and other public facilities that would help out a developer. Carlton said he hopes to have all these financial commitments in place and a contract signed with a developer by December 1993. TAG: 9205280175