Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
About Ramola Motwani
Position: Personal: Education: Career highlights: Community involvement: Hobbies: planned on the site, but the project fell apart in 2009, during the recession.
She again had to be patient, as the property was resold in 2014 and a new partnership was struck last year that led to the property now being the Ocean Resort Residences at Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach, a 290-unit, allsuite condo-resort.
Ramola Motwani recalls that when she and her husband closed on that first block of property, he told her: “God willing one day some [brand] like Hilton will be here.” She marvels that the Conrad Hilton now occupies that space.
She worked day and night operating the hotels, with the hope her sons would someday join the business. They both studied at Duke, worked on Wall Street, then earned master’s degrees in real estate development at Columbia University.
When their mother began transitioning from hotel management to development, the family business became more appealing to her sons, who returned to South Florida in 2004 and 2007.
Dev Motwani, 37, now leads a more diversified company with projects that include the recently completed Gale Boutique Hotel & Residences in Fort Lauderdale; while Nitin Motwani, 39, manages Miami-area development including the Miami Worldcenter, a residential and retail project under construction.
Dev Motwani said he most admires his mother’s humility and work ethic. “There’s no task that’s too big or too small. She approaches it with the same tenacity,” he said.
“She would always say, ‘It never hurts to ask,’ he said, when pursuing something in business. She also told him: “Your word is critical. If you say you’re going to do something, do it.’”
Ramola was born in Sukkur, India, to parents who owned businesses. She was 17 when she met Bob, and they came to the United States when she was 26. At first, they operated a retail and import business near St. Louis. But they kept hearing about the college students coming to Fort Lauderdale for spring break.
So in 1986, the couple bought the Merrimac, Gold Coast and Tropic Cay hotels, all within a few blocks of one another.
“They were high school sweethearts coming out of India,” Dev Motwani said. But what was unusual at that time is that “they were equals in the business,” he said.
It was the mid-1980s, and Fort Lauderdale’s spring break tradition was coming to an end. Community leaders had grown weary of the disruption each season. But the community had no plan for business survival, she recalls.
So they “started working on the future of Fort Lauderdale beach,” she said. The couple filled their hotels by working directly with Scandinavian and other tour operators, listening to what they wanted in a vacation destination. What they ultimately wanted were “fresh properties with amenities,” she said.
“The transformation of Fort Lauderdale beach from independent hotels to now the jewel of the beach, the Four Seasons — it did not just happen,” she said. “It was a journey.”