The historic Deauville Beach Resort in Miami Beach will be demolished after the city’s building official issued a final demolition permit Wednesday.
The shuttered hotel, at 6701 Collins Ave., will be brought down by implosion and conventional demolition, according to a Thursday memo from City Manager Alina Hudak to the City Commission. A date for the demolition was not provided.
The owners of the hotel, the Meruelo family, submitted an engineering report that recommended the demolition of the structure before the hurricane season begins in June. The building, which famously hosted The Beatles in 1964, has been closed since sustaining damage due to an electrical fire in 2017. It has racked up $2.3 million in fines from the city for failing to maintain a historic property.
If the building is demolished, Miami Beach code authorizes the Historic Preservation Board to require the replication of the original structure and to order that the new building have the same height and density of the previous structure.
The approval of the permit came days after Judge Michael Hanzman, who is overseeing a lawsuit filed by the city against the owners of the hotel for not bringing it up to code, denied the city’s request to perform an independent inspection of the building. The Building Official, Ana Salgueiro, ordered the demolition in January after inspecting the property with a team of experts, but preservationists and some commissioners demanded a second opinion.
After Hanzman’s ruling, the permit was approved Wednesday. The final requirement was for the Deauville owners to pay the required $93,777 fee, which they did Wednesday.
The Miami Design Preservation League, a Miami Beach preservation group, has challenged Salgueiro’s order to Miami-Dade County. If the appeal is successful, the order could be invalidated, Hudak wrote in the memo.
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 5:02 PM.
Martin Vassolo covers the politics and government of Miami Beach for the Miami Herald. He began working for the Herald in January 2018 after attending the University of Florida, where he served as the editor-in-chief of The Independent Florida Alligator. Previously, he was a general assignment reporter on the Herald’s metro desk and a political reporting intern.
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