Miami-Dade has had its foot on a stubborn ground-breaking shovel for a hotel next to the Miami Beach Convention Center for almost a decade. It may just have started to dig in a little last week when commissioners agreed to toss another $75 million into the $500 million-plus project. That could get the 28-month hotel-building task started in early 2025 and opened by 2027. County commissioners approved unanimously last week a resolution regarding a 1993 amendment to an agreement between the county and Miami Beach. Neither the amendment nor the agreement itself says anything about building a hotel next to the convention center. The agreement centers on refinancing bonds. The first and only time a hotel is mentioned is in a revised resolution submitted by Commissioner Eileen Higgins at the Oct. 16 commission meeting. If the hotel does take 28 months to build and its construction does begin in early 2025, it would begin accepting guests just seven decades shy of the convention center’s grand opening in 1958. It won’t be a clash between something old and something new, however, since the center completed a $640 million renovation in 2018. The price tag on the whole building in 1958 was $4 million. Commissioners exchanged both praise for each other’s hotel-pursuit persistence and questions and observations about what’s taking so long. Most major convention centers have adjacent hotels. Groups hunting for convention locations often make an adjacent hotel a must. It’s true that another Florida city, Orlando, has a convention center with no adjacent hotel, but it has a plethora of places to stay, as well as beckoning amusement parks, surround its convention center. Among reasons offered for the delay, including by Miami Beach Assistant City Manager Rickelle Williams, was the covid pandemic. Commission Chairman Oliver G. Gilbert III reduced the issue to its lowest common denominator: “This is something we need to do for the county,” he began. “We talk about tourism a lot, and … when we talk about tourists, we talk about … people coming here, and, yeah, families might come here … But the business of tourism is different. “The business of tourism is bringing in those conventions with 3,000 people,” Mr. Gilbert continued. “They’re [eating at] restaurants, they’re filling beds, they’re shopping at our shops, they’re visiting the extraordinary things around the county. “The business of tourism is one of the things that we have to continuously be mindful of, and we have to continuously invest in. It does not make sense for us not to have … a hotel attached to the convention center.” Commissioners both echoed Chairman Gilbert’s view and expanded on it. “The $75 million grant,” Eileen Higgins said, provides a “gap fund … to finally get the convention center hotel under construction…. There’s zero reason,” she added, that “they can’t be under construction in nine months. “Over a 30-year period,” she added, the hotel “will add about $300 million in food and beverage taxes.” The center and future hotel sit in her district. Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins expressed concern about how the hotel would be funded. She pointed out that when Miami Beach residents passed a referendum in 2018 in favor of building the hotel, it included a caveat that none of the city’s taxpayer money would be used. The grant comes from the Miami Beach Redevelopment Agency, which receives funding through tax increment revenues. The agency uses the increase in property tax revenue to finance projects. So, county officials explained, the money comes from the redevelopment agency, not Miami Beach taxpayers. Ms. Cohen Higgins suggested it was a distinction without a difference. Designated the Grand Hyatt Miami Beach hotel, the 17-story, 800-room luxury hotel is to rise at 17th Street and Convention Center Drive. The two companies that have partnered to build it are Terra Group, of Coconut Grove, and Turnberry Associates in Aventura. The 90,000-square-foot hotel is to have suites, according to the convention center’s website, with meeting space both inside the hotel and 10,000 square feet outdoors. Amenities, according to the website, are to include a resort-style pool deck with panoramic views, a signature restaurant, a Grand Hyatt Club Lounge, and limited retail space at street level. An elevated skybridge is to connect the hotel to the convention center, allowing easy access for event attendees. Related Posts:Miami Beach moves to speed construction of convention hotelWorks paves way for convention center hotel groundbreakingMiami hotel rates, revenues near top in nationMiami International Airport to get one new hotel, not twoSpring visitor numbers taking offThe post County OK’s $75 million grant to get convention center hotel going appeared first on Miami Today.