South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Historic Deauville hotel to be demolished
Miami Beach’s building official has issued a demolition order for the historic Deauville Beach Resort following an inspection of the deteriorating hotel complex last week.
In a memo Thursday, city commissioners were informed that Building Official Ana Salgueiro had “declared the demolition order for the unsafe structure of the Deauville Hotel,” a 1957 building that famously hosted The Beatles, Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy.
Salgueiro confirmed the findings of an engineering report submitted by the owners of the Deauville, who have sought to tear the building down. The owners’ engineering report found that the building had exceeded its lifespan. The city also sent the report to the Miami-Dade County staff that administers the Board of Rules and Appeals, who agreed with the recommendation to demolish, according to the memo.
Assistant City Manager Eric Carpenter told the Miami Herald following the announcement that the city’s goal is that the demolition take place prior to the start of hurricane season in June, in line with the recommendation in the engineering report.
Following Salgueiro’s conclusion that the building should be demolished, Carpenter said the city will review the demolition permit that the Deauville owners submitted in December, which could take between 30 and 60 days.
If the permit is approved, the building owners, Deauville Associates, LLC, would be required to go through a roughly two-month process of preparing the building for demolition, Carpenter said.
Salgueiro’s order is the latest development in the fight over the fate of the hotel, which has become a cause for preservationists determined to save a piece of history.
The hotel has been closed since an electrical fire in 2017. The city took the owners to the county’s Unsafe Structures Board in 2018 to compel them to make repairs and in 2019 sued the owners for violating a city law mandating minimum maintenance requirements for historic buildings. The judge in the case ordered that the owners file for a demolition permit and for the city to review it.
“I think the goal is to get this squared away before hurricane season starts because of the condition of the building,” Carpenter said.
Following recommendations from the city’s Historic Preservation Board, Carpenter said the city issued a letter to the owners urging that they preserve historical elements of the building, ranging from chandeliers and hotel signage to architectural structures. Whether anything is salvaged from the building may depend on the owners’ willingness to cooperate with the city, he said.
Prior to the inspection last Friday, the owners objected to the city’s invitation to a preservation-minded architect to take part in the site visit, he said.
“The owners have been very difficult and I believe they will continue to be very difficult,” Carpenter said. “They have fought us at every turn. I hope that they have a change of opinion or a change of approach but I am not overly optimistic.”
If the building is demolished, city code gives the Historic Preservation Board the power to require the replication of the original structure and that the new building have the same height and density of the previous structure.
At its meeting on Jan. 11, the preservation board urged the city to bring on an independent structural engineer with historic preservation experience to conduct a survey and to save any architecturally significant elements of the building if the demolition permit is issued. Carpenter said the hotel owners’ cooperation with the city will impact the board’s decision to approve any new plans for the building if it were to be demolished. “We’re hoping that everybody tries to make the best of a bad situation,” he said. “I am concerned that we may not get any more cooperation than we have gotten in the past.” The imminent demolition of the Deauville, which was foreshadowed in a Jan. 7 memo, has angered preservationists, who questioned the haste of the decision and whether the city ’s preservation laws were strong enough to prevent the so-called “demolition by neglect” of a historic building. Planning Board Member Tanya Bhatt alerted her followers to the demolition order in a Thursday morning email, saying the order should not be issued until an independent engineer could conduct a separate survey of the building.
“This cannot be allowed to proceed,” she wrote. Bhatt said it would be premature to assume the building will be demolished. She noted that the City Commission is expected to discuss the Deauville at its Thursday meeting, where three commissioners have introduced items to discuss and possibly take action on the preservation board’s recommendations. At City Hall, Commissioner Mark Samuelian told reporters Thursday that he would call for an independent engineering review under the control of the city’s Inspector General to determine whether any parts of the building can be safely preserved. “This is a beautiful historic property,” Samuelian said. “We need to do all the due diligence necessary, putting safety first.” Because the only engineering report on the Deauville has come from property owners who have long sought the demolition of the property, Samuelian said he wants to hear a second opinion before he makes a final decision on what is needed for the building.
The 1957 building famously hosted The Beatles, Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy.