Related Group and BH Group won approval to build a 500-key hotel on a site across the street from the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood.
Coconut Grove-based Related and Aventura-based BH paid $21.5 million in December to acquire the 4.4-acre site at 3451-3690 South Ocean Drive from the owners of the Diplomat hotel, Honolulu-based Trinity Investments and Credit Suisse.
The planned hotel project will also have condo-hotel units for sale with hotel services, according to a BH spokesperson. The number of these units hasn’t been determined yet.
Related, led by CEO Jorge Pérez and his sons Jon Paul and Nick, and BH, led by Isaac and Liat Toledano, have acquired another site across from the Diplomat for a 350-unit condominium development just south of their hotel development site.
In August, Related and BH paid $30 million to buy the condo site at 3210-3690 South Ocean Drive from Trinity and Credit Suisse.
The developers won city approval in August to amend a master plan of development for Diplomat Landing, a property along the Intracoastal Waterway and across the street from the Diplomat Beach Resort that includes two parking garages and the condo and hotel development sites.
The planned 500-key hotel is expected to help the 1,000-key Diplomat Beach Resort at 3555 South Ocean Drive to attract larger events to the Diplomat’s convention center.
“This [new hotel] building is going to be nestled right between the existing parking garages,” Andria Wingett, Hollywood’s director of development services, said Wednesday at a Hollywood City Commission meeting. The commission approved the hotel site plan and a related plat amendment at the meeting.
The as-yet unnamed hotel is designed with 366 parking spaces, including 324 spaces in the south parking garage and 42 spaces in the north parking garage. The developers will be “reconfiguring some portions of the southern garage in order to accommodate this,” Wingett said.
At 443 feet and 8 inches, the planned hotel would be taller than the planned condominium building, designed at a height of 419 feet, and shorter than the 457-foot-tall Diplomat Beach Resort. “When you go south on our barrier island, we tend to get taller buildings along there, and higher density,” Wingett said.
Working closely with Trinity and Credit Suisse, Related and BH have a two-phase master plan to finish construction of the 350-unit condominium building in 2026 and the 500-key, Hilton-branded hotel in 2027, according to materials submitted to city staff.
Trinity and Credit Suisse paid $850 million about a year ago to acquire the Diplomat Beach Resort and the parking garages and development sites across the street from New York-based Brookfield Property Partners.
Brookfield previously tried to sell the Diplomat, the garages, and the development sites to Aventura-based billionaire developer Jeffrey Soffer. He had planned to pay $850 million for the properties, but that deal fell apart in 2022.
Francisco Alvarado contributed to this report.