Keyah Real Estate Group is planning a seven story, 238-key hotel on South Beach’s Washington Avenue.
An affiliate of Aventura-based Keyah, led by Xaver Kriechbaum and Gavin Crescenzo, will tear down a single-story retail building and 13-unit apartment building at 1509 and 1515 Washington Avenue that the firm acquired for $20 million, records show.
The seller, an entity managed by Miami Beach-based real estate investor Jimmy Resnick, paid $550,000 for the retail building in 1987, and $4.6 million for the apartment building in 2006, records show.
Resnick provided Keyah with $15 million in seller financing.
In April, the Miami Beach Planning Board approved Keyah’s project, which entails 238 rooms, a 5,677-square-foot restaurant on the ground-floor, a pool deck on the second floor and a rooftop 3,525-square-foot restaurant, city records show. Designed by Coconut Grove-based Arquitectonica, the hotel would span 91,230 square feet.
Keyah is negotiating a possible branding deal with Cloud One Hotel, a European hospitality company that has a hotel in New York City, plans submitted with the city of Miami Beach show.
Last year, Resnick had a pending deal to sell the properties to Urbin, a subsidiary of Location Ventures, the Coral Gables-based development firm that went belly up following a string of lawsuits from lenders, investors and vendors alleging defaulted loans, unrealized profit returns and nonpayment of services. At the time, then-Urbin and Location Ventures CEO Rishi Kapoor had planned to convert the retail and apartment buildings into a co-living condo project, but the deal fizzled.
Kapoor, who is in the middle of several litigation battles, including a federal civil lawsuit by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, was also planning a co-living project at 1260 Washington Avenue that started construction last year, but is no longer moving forward.
In recent years, Miami Beach officials have sought to spur redevelopment of older commercial buildings along Washington Avenue by allowing hotel, multifamily and short-term rental uses.
In 2021, New York-based Lightstone completed Moxy South Beach, a seven-story, 202-key hotel at 915, 947 and 955 Washington Avenue. The same year, New York-based Imperial Companies opened the $200 million Goodtime Hotel at 601 Washington Avenue. Featuring 266 rooms, Goodtime is operated by celebrity music producer Pharrell Williams, hospitality mogul David Grutman and designer Ken Fulk.
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