Hotel in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea approved to replace aging inn

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea approved a site plan for Sea Glass Beach Place, a three-story, 31-room hotel that would replace a one-story inn built 70 years ago near the beach.

The town’s commission voted last week in favor of the plan to build the 21,990-square-foot Sea Glass Beach Place after demolition of the aging Dolphin Harbor Inn. The current three-building, 21-room hotel at 4245 North Ocean Drive is one block from the beachfront in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea.

The Dolphin Harbor Inn was built in 1952 and expanded in a series of building and pool additions during the next eight years, according to a July 22 memo to the town’s planning and zoning board from Jhannelle Campbell, the town’s development services director.

Plans to renovate the Dolphin Harbor Inn were approved in 2003 and 2016, Campbell reported, but development orders for both plans expired before construction work could start.

Raymond Masucci manages 4245 N Ocean LLC, which acquired the Dolphin Harbor Inn in March 2021 for $2.76 million, according to property records. Masucci’s LLC paid $415,000 less than the previous owner had paid for the hotel in December 2015.

Juan Justiniano, a principal of Fort Lauderdale-based Cataya & Associates Architects, is listed as the applicant for the Sea Glass Beach Place project. The planned hotel is designed in a “mid-century architectural style,” Justiniano told the Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Town Commission at its meeting.

The development site is a 0.6-acre property inside the town’s RM-25 zoning district, and it has a future land-use designation of “multi family residence medium,” limiting residential development to 25 dwelling units per acre.

On Aug. 22, the Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Planning and Zoning Board recommended the approval of the site plan for the project, subject to conditions, including a requirement that the developer start construction within six months of obtaining a building permit.

Another condition requires that, prior to issuance of a site work permit, the developer must obtain an updated and approved “environmental resource” license from Broward County reflecting changes to landscaping at the development site.

The developer plans to remove all trees on the Sea Glass Beach Place site and replace them with at least 20 trees that are native species, which complies with the minimum number the town requires. Palm trees, however, can account for no more than 25 percent of the required trees.

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