Extended Stay To Construct Brickell Hotel

By Marilyn Bowden
Construction is under way on an Extended Stay America hotel at the site of the former Hyde Park market in West Brickell.

The hospitality company paid $4.425 million for the 1.5-acre site at 298 SW 15th Road, says Greg Masin, an associate in Cushman & Wakefield’s retail brokerage division who handled the deal for the seller, Coolidge-South Market Equities.

"At about $70 a foot," he says, "that’s top dollar for that area."

Developer Harvey Taylor said he paid $35-$40 a square foot in the mid-`90s for land two blocks east to build Publix Plaza.

Extended Stay will erect a six-story, 107-key hotel of efficiency studios, says Monique Damiano at the Ft. Lauderdale firm’s corporate communications department.

Permitting is in place, she says. The new property should be opening early in 2001.

"Extended Stay usually chooses business parks in high-visibility areas where there’s a market demand," she says. Hotel development is rife in the Brickell area and Terremark’s recently completed Fortune House markets itself to extended-stay clients. But, like the soon-to-be-completed Mandarin Oriental Miami and JW Marriott — and the Four Seasons that recently broke ground — it targets the luxury market.

An economy hotel in Brickell will have little competition, Mr. Masin says.

The 19,000-square-foot supermarket on the site was razed last week.

"While the site was previously retail in use," Mr. Masin says, "it’s on the outskirts of the corridor. Given the amount of specialty retail proposed for the corridor, hospitality became a more viable use."

Ms. Damiano says Extended Stay America will open about 30 properties across the US this year. An Extended Stay at Northwest 21st Terrace in Beacon Centre Business Park is to open this fall.