Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Investors move in
Trump once linked to site
A group buys nearly 300 condo units at the Conrad on Fort Lauderdale beach.
A Canadian real estate investment firm paid more than $91 million for 232 units at the Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach, a condohotel once linked to President-elect Donald Trump.
Entities tied to the Heafey Group of Quebec spent $53.26 million for 182 units and $37.76 million for 50 units at the property at 551 N. Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd., public records show.
The 290-unit condo-hotel was owned by CFLB Partnerships LLC, an affiliate of Orchestra Hotels & Resorts, which bought the property for $115 million in 2013.
The 24-story property used to be known as the Trump International Hotel & Tower, but a planned 2007 opening never happened due to the housing collapse.
Trump eventually pulled out of the project, saying the original developer, SB Associates, broke the terms of a deal to license his name.
Buyers sued to get their deposits back, saying they invested because they believed Trump was the developer.
In 2014, Trump testified in Broward Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale that he never claimed to be the developer and that he only licensed the use of his name to SB Associates to boost the condo-hotel’s image. A jury sided with Trump.
“We had high hopes for the project,” Trump said at the time. “It was a good location . ... We would have ultimately done a very good job had the market not crashed.”
Heafey also paid nearly $9 million for common-area and restaurant space, records show.
Company officials in Miami did not return calls Friday. The privately held firm’s website lists more than three dozen projects in its portfolio, including Bentley Edgewater, a condo-hotel in Miami-Dade County.
In a condo-hotel, units are professionally managed and rented when the owners aren’t living there.
The Conrad has a mix of studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom suites and three penthouses. Units were marketed as Ocean Resort Residences. Prices start below $1 million, with some of the larger units stretching into the millions of dollars.