Ever wish there were more establishments on Fort Lauderdale beach than just swanky resorts, cut-rate motels, and those shops that sell "FBI: Female Body Inspector" shirts and mysteriously manage to stay in business?
Two international hedge-fund managers are here to help. As Scott Wyman at the SS reports, Swedish investor Par Sanda has been buying up struggling old hotels on the barrier island between Bayshore Drive and the Bonnet House.
Michael Wekerle, a Canadian, has been acquiring neglected properties
around Sunrise Lane, near where the old Holiday Inn was recently
reopened as the B Ocean Hotel.
Sanda's associate, hotelier Richard Gray, says the investor wants the Fort Lauderdale
beach
to be more like South Beach, with a mix of boutique resorts with small
shops and restaurants. He described another one of Sanda's recent
ventures: to combine the Royal Palms gay resort with two other hotels to
create a chic, sprawling gay hotel.
City Commissioner Charlotte
Rodstrom, whose district includes parts of the beach area, said she had
met with Wekerle and his lawyer and believes he wants to turn the
Escape Hotel, a historic midcentury building, into another upscale
resort.
Parrot Lounge owner Tim Schiavone told the paper that he
was supportive of new diversity in the neighborhood. Don't despair --
it's unlikely that even the superwealthy will be able to completely
scrub the beach's beer-soaked element of grunge. Let's hope Mickey Clean
has a place amid all the boutiques and resorts.
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