Stephen Ross doesn't want to spend his own money to renovate Sun Life Stadium because he's apparently too busy buying hotels.
Specifically, Ross' New York-based Related Cos. Related Fund Management is dropping a reported $90 million to buy the W Hotel & Residences in Fort Lauderdale.
The group says the hotel will remain the W, instead of being renamed after a beer or a bank or something like that.
See also: Miami Dolphins "Put the Cart Before the Horse," Says House Speaker Will Weatherford
The W, located at 401 N. Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale, is a 23-story, two-tower hotel that includes 346 rooms and 171 condo units.
The hotel has been around since 2009.
If you've never been there, the Fort Lauderdale W has a pretty sweet see-through pool.
It was the condo units that were on the market for $90 million, but Joanna Rose, spokeswoman for Related Fund Management, says the group also purchased the hotel units. The amount for those units is undisclosed.
Ross has made a fortune in real estate -- enough to buy himself, as Pink Floyd would say, a football team.
Last year, he made headlines when he asked taxpayers to pick up some of the tab for $400 million worth of renovations to Sun Life Stadium. Ross was eventually shot down.
Ross tried again and again to sell taxpayers on the notion that taking their money to fix up the stadium was a good idea for the community -- even though pretty much every study on the subject showed that the opposite would be true. Coupled with the fact that the Miami Marlins essentially duped Miami-Dade County taxpayers into buying them their new stadium, Ross' dream of having other people pay for his stadium was all but dead.
Ross even made veiled threats of moving the team out of Miami.
But it would appear that those threats were empty, and Ross was forced to relent and announced that he'd now pay for the renovations himself.
As for his brand-new hotel, overall the hotel market has been so-so in South Florida lately, but there's obviously something to this purchase. While Ross has done a piss-poor job running the Dolphins, he seems to be a master at real estate. So one would have to assume he's made a tremendous investment here.
"The W Fort Lauderdale is a well-amenitized oceanfront property in a premier market, and we see great potential to add value through a well-executed upgrade and repositioning plan," Rose said via the Sun Sentinel.
Send your story tips to the author, Chris Joseph. Follow Chris Joseph on Twitter
Follow @NewTimesBroward
