Room with a view

Latin Trade, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Mary A. Dempsey

In the war of superlatives, Four Seasons is offering the highest to the richest.

Miami has become the battleground for condo-hotel projects geared to the well heeled, including affluent Latin Americans either unaffected by their home countries' waning economies or seeking new investments. All sellers of the condos, tucked into hotel complexes bearing well-known brand names, are banking on the city's position as a principal U.S. gateway for South Americans. But Four Seasons says it offers something more: one of the tallest residential buildings in the United States.

The US$379 million Four Seasons hotel condo will tower 70 stories above Miami, making it, for the eastern part of the United States, the highest building south of New York.

Competitors say service, not superlatives, will win the real estate battle. Ritz-Canton, for example, is offering such novelties as a shopping butler and a "Bow Wow butler" to help guests with pets at its new condo-hotel in Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood. That 22-story complex--two mauve and aqua towers joined by an atrium--features 208 condos on the uppermost floors. And the Fontainebleau II, a condo-hotel tower beside the Hilton resort with the same name, will include a European spa, concierge, room service and 24-hour security for its residents. Argentines and Venezuelans have already snapped up some of the units, which won't be completed for two years. Prices run from $350,000 to $4 million.

But the Four Seasons, which opens for business in mid-2003, says there's something to be said about sweeping views of Miami and the ocean. Still, buyers lured by what they'll see from their floor-to-ceiling windows will have to shell out for the remarkable views. The smallest condos on the 40th floor start at $480,000. The penthouses run as much as $6.2 million. Like the other hotel-condo projects in the city, the hotel rooms are clustered on the lower floors of the building.