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Developer wins approval for 13-story Embassy Suites hotel in Dania Beach

Doral-based Benito Irastorza raised the allowable height of his planned hotel by promising to obtain LEED Green Building certification and to cover the cost of 20 new public parking spaces

Benito Irastorva with the Embassy Suites hotel
Benito Irastorva with the Embassy Suites hotel (Embassy Suites)

A Doral-based developer won approval in Dania Beach for a 222-room Embassy Suites by Hilton hotel on Federal Highway.

Benito Irastorza, CEO of Iras Group, is the manager of an LLC that acquired the hotel development site in August 2016 for $3.1 million, according to state and county records.

Irastorza plans to build a 13-story hotel on the 1.2-acre site, just south of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, at 233 North Federal Highway. The site is now occupied by a one-story retail building called Dania Plaza that will be demolished.

The Dania Beach City Commission on Tuesday approved a site plan for the Embassy Suites development in a zoning area with a standard seven-story limit on building height.
Irastorza qualified his Embassy Suites project for six stories of bonus height by pledging to achieve a LEED Green Building Certificate for the hotel (four stories) and to pay $130,000 for 20 new public parking spaces (two stories).

The hotel is designed to total 219,098 square feet, including guestrooms, ballrooms, meeting rooms, lounges, shops, and a restaurant that will be open to the public. The hotel also will have a swimming pool and sun deck on the fifth floor and 212 parking spaces.

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“This will be the first major project that people see, coming [south] from the airport,” Richard Coker, an attorney for Irastorza, told commissioners at the Tuesday meeting. “It will by far be the most high-end hotel in the city of Dania Beach.”

The approved site plan for the Embassy Suites included deviations from local design standards for building setbacks, roofs, parking garage ramps, landscaping, and valet parking spaces.

“One of the reasons for the variances and variations is this is a truly urban hotel,” Coker said. For example, Dania Beach rules required that no more than 10 percent of the parking spaces at Embassy Suites could be set aside for valet parking, he said. “That’s a suburban type of requirement … Virtually all of our parking will be valet parking.”

Dania Beach Vice Mayor Lori Lewellen questioned the gray and white color scheme on the exterior of the planned hotel, which she says is too commonplace among newer developments in Dania Beach: “Earth tones, over and over again.”

“Some of the colors are dictated by the brand,” Irastorza responded.

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Dania BeachHotels