Florida city can’t stop demolition of 2 historic hotels under new state law

As a prominent developer gets ready to demolish two hotel buildings in a signature Miami Beach historic district, officials in a city known for its robust preservation rules say they are powerless to do anything about it.

The reason: a controversial year-old state law that gives property owners in certain coastal areas unfettered power to tear down historic buildings, overriding local regulations designed to protect structures designated as architecturally or historically significant.

The plan by Miami developer 13th Floor Investments is the first in Miami Beach to take advantage of the so-called Resiliency and Safe Structures Act, though city officials say it likely won’t be the last. Local critics say the act, which its sponsors contend is meant to promote new development better designed to meet rising seas, threatens scores of buildings in Beach historic districts, including some of its most famous, like the Eden Roc, Casablanca and Cadillac hotels.

When the 13th Floor group submitted an application for a demolition permit of two-long shuttered hotel buildings in the city’s Collins Waterfront Historic District, the Miami Beach city attorney’s office, citing the new law, concluded in a memo that its historic preservation board no longer has the power to consider it.

Instead, the board was limited to a cursory review of 13th Floor’s plan, in partnership with Italy’s Cipriani family, to replace the historic structures with an ultra-luxury, 17-story Casa Cipriani condo, hotel and private club. The board approved the new building design in a 5-0 vote on Tuesday.

Board member Ray Breslin, while endorsing the new design, noted that the state Legislature had tied the city’s hands.

“This board doesn’t get to decide whether these buildings get torn down or not. Tallahassee has taken that away from us,” he told attendees, three of whom asked the developers to preserve at least the building facades.

Restoration plan dropped

Thirteenth floor dropped an effort to restore and expand the historic buildings after the resiliency law was approved.

The developers’ proposal may become an issue in city commission elections set for November.

Commission candidate Daniel Ciraldo, until recently the influential executive director of the Miami Design Preservation League, issued an open letter last week urging the Cipriani family, whose historic Harry’s Bar in Venice is the foundation of a growing real estate and hospitality empire, to reconsider its plan for Miami Beach.

Calling on the Ciprianis’ “international legacy in hospitality, culture, and historic preservation,” Ciraldo argued they should consider saving the two historic buildings and incorporating them into a larger project, a common redevelopment model on the Beach. The family’s two other high-luxury Casa Cipriani projects, in New York City and Milan, both entailed extensive renovation and conversion of historic buildings.

“These buildings, locally and nationally designated as historic landmarks, are not merely aging structures,” Ciraldo said in his letter, referring to the Beach hotels. “They are among the few remaining testaments to a bygone era of Miami Beach’s architectural and cultural identity. Though long neglected, they are repairable—and more importantly, they are irreplaceable.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, an MDPL representative, Roger Goldblatt, said the organization is “strongly opposed” to the buildings’ total demolition and also urged the developers to preserve the building fronts.

Two other speakers, including one representing the Mid-Beach Neighborhood Association, favored the 13th Floor plan. The developers’ attorney, Neisen Kasdin, said several other Beach residents’ groups sent the city letters supporting the new Casa Cipriani.

The two buildings 13th Floor hopes to tear down are the 1941 Coral Reef Hotel and the 1937 Patrician Hotel, at 3621 and 3611 Collins Ave. Both have stood vacant for years as the developer worked on plans to restore them as part of a contemplated expansion.

Both are listed as “contributing buildings” in a city historic district approved by the Beach commission in 2000 to preserve the mid-20th Century hotels and resorts that define the 20-block stretch of Collins between 21st Street and 41st Street. Contributing buildings are those that have architectural designs that provide the district its historic character, and thus are typically protected from demolition or substantial exterior alternations.

It’s also designated as a National Historic District by the federal government, though unlike the local designation that mostly honorific label confers no protection.

The Coral Reef and Patrician are both decidedly modest in scale and design, especially when compared to some of their better-known architectural neighbors. The six-story, Art Deco Patrician was designed by one of Miami Beach’s leading architects of the 1930s and 1940s, Roy F. France. The three-story Coral Reef was designed in a style melding Colonial and Art Deco elements by the far lesser-known Joseph J. DeBrita.

The hotels are some of the earliest surviving in the district, which in the ’40s and ’50s became known for its rows of high-rise resort-style luxury hotels, including three other landmarks designed by France — the Cadillac, the Versailles and the Saxony, now known as the Faena.

Directly south of the adjoining Patrician and Coral Reef hotels, the gutted Versailles tower has also been vacant for years, awaiting a planned and already approved restoration and expansion by Miami’s OKO Group and the Aman Resorts hotel group. Some preservationists, however, fear the Versailles could meet the same planned fate as its neighbors.

Mysterious origins of bill

That’s because all the famed hotels in the district fall within the area targeted by the resiliency act, sponsored by State Sen. Bryan Avila, a Republican from Hialeah Gardens, and State Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican from North Ft. Myers. Their proposals were initially significantly more extensive than what was eventually approved, and would have included virtually all historic buildings within a half-mile of the state coast. But it was significantly pared back after a massive uproar that extended from St. Augustine to the Beach and Key West.

The legislation followed a mysterious path to adoption last year, as documented by independent Florida journalist Jason Garcia. A new nonprofit group called A Resilient Future Florida in Jacksonville helped draft the bills and provided them to the legislators, according to records obtained by Garcia. The Resilient group hired the prominent GOP-connected Ballard Partners lobbying firm and donated $40,000 to political committees supporting Republican lawmakers.

But who provided the money remains unknown, and none of the parties involved will talk. As a “dark money” political entity, Resilient Florida does not have to disclose its donors. Speculation has centered on developers, including 13th Floor, which contributed $10,000 each to Avila and Roach just before the legislation was first introduced in 2023. Through representatives, 13th Floor declined to comment on the legislation.

Avila and Roach’s legislation came as developers were increasingly looking to redevelop valuable beachfront properties, many occupied by historically designated buildings, in Miami Beach.

Most prominently, Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross had been embroiled in a costly losing battle to redevelop the historic Deauville Hotel in North Beach. Allowed to crumble into disrepair by its owners, the Meruelo family, the famous hotel was ordered demolished by the city as a hazardous structure.

But Ross’ plan to build a pair of massive luxury residential towers in its place failed when voters blocked the increased density it would require. In what’s widely considered to be a response, the legislature then barred referendums on zoning matters. But Beach commission upped the ante, increasing the number of votes for approval of such increases to six out of seven commission members.

Ross walked away. Subsequently, the Meruelos teamed up with another prominent Miami developer, Terra Group’s David Martin, who has won approval for an alternative plan that won commission favor by setting out to partly replicate the historic Deauville hotel tower, lobby and dining and shopping complex, while adding a pair of luxury condo towers above.

In the end, the narrowed state resiliency law ended up targeting mostly beachfront areas of Miami Beach north of the famed Art Deco district, which ends at 23rd Street.

The legislation now applies only to buildings that sit at least partially on the seaward side of the state’s coastal construction control line, a boundary that hugs the coast and is meant to restrict construction near beaches. That line runs up the entire Atlantic coastline of Miami Beach, and virtually all beachfront buildings in the city lie at least in part within the target zone.

Three reasons to raze

Such buildings are now subject to demolition without city interference in three cases: If they do not meet FEMA flood codes, are deemed unsafe by a local building official, or are ordered to be demolished by a local government. Most historic buildings in the city don’t meet modern FEMA codes.

Under pressure, the legislators exempted the Art Deco district, which covers a big swath of South Beach, by keeping in place protections for historic districts created before 2000 — the year the Collins Waterfront District was designated. Also exempted from the act are buildings individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places, which includes a small handful like the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach.

That still left many of Beach’s protected 2,600 structures vulnerable to demolition, including those in historic districts along Collins in mid-Beach and North Beach.

Unusually, 13th Floor teamed up on its plan with the seven-unit condo next door, Beach House 8. Unifying the properties will allow the Casa Cipriani building more square footage than it would by itself. That’s because the condo did not use all its allowable density when built in 2016, and that amount can be transferred next door.

Building bigger and better on the site of the two historic hotels, 13th Floor representatives contend, would actually enhance the historic district.

The Coral Reef and Patrician, they argue, are a historic anomaly within the district, which mostly consists of much larger, grander hotels built subsequently, and thus are not representative of the area’s architectural value.

That limited value, they say, doesn’t justify the enormous cost and labor it would require to save them.

The historic buildings cannot be suitably adapted as they stand for sea level rise, or easily accommodate expansion to meet current FEMA rules because they sit below flood level.

They’re also hard to adapt to meet federal accessibility requirements, and low ceilings and insufficient structural strength mean that they could not support the weight of building systems that have to be elevated to meet city flood-proofing building requirements. To do so would require such extensive strengthening that the renovated structures would in effect be reproductions, they say.

The developers could have applied for full demolition to the board. But board members historically have been loath to approve projects that lead to the loss of historic structures. In some cases, the board has approved projects where original buildings or frontages are preserved and restored while towers are added at the side or to the rear.

The new Casa Cipriani plan

But 13th Floor decided instead to start with a clean slate.

Its plan envisions 36 hotel rooms, 23 condos, a private member’s club, spa and wellness facilities, and private food and beverage venues. Their architect is New York-based Brandon Haw, who as a member of British architect Norman Foster’s firm also designed the Faena House condo a couple of blocks down Collins that is part-time home to several billionaires.

Thirteenth Floor’s partner, the Cipriani family of Venice, have extended the brand established by Harry’s Bar internationally with a series of hotels and condos, including several in Miami, with Casa Cipriani its most luxurious level.

Its Milan Casa Cipriani occupies a former palace, while its lower Manhattan site is housed in a converted ferry terminal. By contrast, the Miami project would be all new construction.

During Tuesday’s hearing, one Beach resident noted the irony that previous Casa Cipriani projects involved preservation while the family and its partners opted for demolition for Miami Beach’s historic buildings, and she blamed the legislature for interfering in local decision-making.

“It doesn’t seem fair that here we could lose our historic buildings in Miami Beach,” Veronica Saragovia, who described herself as a concerned resident, told the board. “Tallahassee is about eight hours by car if you don’t stop and about 500 miles away. It doesn’t make it right historically.”

Removing the historic hotels would allow the new building to be set well back from Collins, its application cover letter to the city states. That allows for a grand entryway with lush gardens in front.

The ground level would be raised well above the site’s current elevation to meet current resiliency standards, with a tower set above a two-story base housing a double-height lobby. The entryway has been designed so that it can still function even if the city raises Collins Avenue three feet to meet rising sea and flood levels.

The building would have a two-story basement housing a spa and one level of parking. Automated gates would come down to keel floodwaters out.

Inside and out, the Casa Cipriani design would meld a modern style with retro Art Deco touches, an approach 13th Floor says will fit well with its historic mid-Century neighbors in terms of both look and scale. Like Haw’s nearby Faena house, it would have wrap-around balconies, but the guardrails would consist of fluted terracotta panels topped with fritted glass.

The two-story base would be clad in limestone and feature decorative fluted columns.

“When you walk into this building, it will be old-world, elegant Art Deco. It’s not a glass jewelbox,” said 13th Floor’s attorney and lobbyist, Kasdin, in an interview. “It’s a very luxurious building that complements what’s going on in the neighborhood.”

So lavish are the appointments and amenities that the restaurant will dispatch chefs to cook in condo residents’ kitchens. Several real estate news sites have put the starting price for units at $25 million, though 13th Floor declined to confirm that, saying it’s too early to determine.

Because of the state resiliency pre-emption, the city preservation board also is not allowed to require the developers to reproduce or retain any design elements of the original buildings, and also can’t limit the scale or height of the new building to historic parameters.

Given that and the project’s high-quality design, board chairman John Stuart said on Tuesday, there wasn’t much more for the panel to do other than vote.

“Understanding the legislative landscape that we’re working within here, which is new for all of us here, I appreciate the amount of detail you have put into your plans,” Stuart told the developers’ team. “I appreciate the way the building steps back, and it’s in a line of buildings that’s going to be an incredible landscape for hospitality in our city.”

In her analysis of the design, city preservation director Deborah Tackett recommended the board approve the proposed new building.

“Staff is supportive of the contemporary design language of the proposed structure, as it has been well developed and when evaluated within the entirety of its surrounding context, it achieves a high level of compatibility with its immediate neighbors in terms of its overall design aesthetic,” the report concludes.