The Miami Beach Convention Center Hotel will be a Grand Hyatt when construction is completed and the massive property opens in 2023.
Designed by Arquitectonica, the 17-story, 800-room hotel will mark the first Grand Hyatt in South Florida, developers David Martin of Terra and Jackie Soffer of Turnberry announced Monday. In Florida, the brand also operates the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay.
An elevated skybridge will link the Miami Beach Convention Center to the Grand Hyatt Miami Beach at the intersection of 17th Street and Convention Center Drive, near Lincoln Road. Construction is expected to begin in about a month, depending on permits, Soffer said. The project will go vertical in 2021.
“Hyatt was strongly interested in bringing Grand Hyatt to Miami Beach, in being part of the convention center expansion,” Soffer told The Real Deal. “And we felt it was a good match for this property and for the upscale project that we are bringing to Miami Beach.”
The nearly $400 million hotel project, to be built on city-owned land, was approved by Miami Beach voters in 2018, following years of failed attempts by other developers.
The Grand Hyatt Miami Beach development team also includes Miami Design District developer Craig Robins of Dacra, who is married to Soffer. Designers will include New York-based Stonehill Taylor, which is designing the hotel’s interior lobby, lounges, ballroom, meeting rooms, hotel rooms and all common areas; Coral Gables-based EOA, which is designing the pool deck hospitality features; and Miami-based ArquitectonicaGEO, which is creating pedestrian promenades and landscapes, according to a release.
The hotel will have 12 floors of guest rooms, two floors of meeting spaces and ballrooms, a pool deck on the fifth floor and ground-floor retail space. Other features will include bike sharing stations and ridesharing pick-up and drop-off zones.
A 288-foot-tall convention center hotel was previously proposed by Atlanta-based Portman Holdings, but the proposal failed to reach the required 60 percent voter threshold in 2016. In 2013, a proposal by Tishman Hotels to construct a convention hotel on city-owned land was killed by a court challenge.
The Miami Beach Convention Center just underwent a $600 million renovation, which was completed last year. In January, Clark Construction, the contractor on the project, sued the city of Miami Beach, alleging the city still owes about $90 million for unpaid work.