Kolter, BH Pay Buy Miami Beach Hotel
Kolter Hospitality, a division of Kolter Group, and BH Group have teamed up to buy a Miami Beach hotel.
The joint venture paid $24 million for the Crystal Beach Suites Miami Oceanfront Hotel, an 84-room asset in the city’s North Beach neighborhood completed in 1950, BH principal Isaac Toledano told The Real Deal.
Delray Beach-based Kolter and Aventura-based BH obtained financing from New York-based Cerco Funding that was arranged by Cary Pollack with Meridian Capital, Toledano said.
The seller of the property at 6985 Collins Avenue is an entity managed by Carrie Garazi, Jennifer Sheppard and Hillel and Judith Meyers, which paid $4.5 million for the hotel in 1991, records show.
Crystal Beach will continue to operate as a hotel, according to Toledano, who also noted that this is his firm’s first joint venture with the Bobby Julien-led Kolter.
BH is also partnering with Coconut Grove-based Related Group on a slate of developments between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. This month, the partnership scored final approval for Icon Aventura, a planned 26-story mixed-use project with 275 condo units, 20 apartments set aside for first responders and teachers in the city and 12,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.
In May, Kolter, which mainly focuses on multifamily, condominium and single-family community projects, sold out 100 Las Olas, a high-rise that is Fort Lauderdale’s tallest condo tower. The 113-unit, 46-story building generated $178 million in condo sales and was completed in 2020.
Crystal Beach Suites is roughly two blocks north from the site of the former Deauville Beach Resort at 6701 Collins Avenue. In November of 2022, the historic hotel was demolished by the city after the property’s owners, the Meruelo family, allegedly let the building fall into disrepair and neglect. Related Companies’ Steve Ross was in talks to purchase the site to redevelop the property into a two-tower luxury condo hotel, but Miami Beach voters rejected the developer’s proposal.
