First black-owned major hotel opens in Miami Beach

Jet, June 3, 2002

R. Donahue Peebles, president and chief executive officer of Miami-based Peebles Atlantic Development Corp., recently opened the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort in Miami Beach, FL.

The building of this structure cast Peebles as the nation's first Black to develop and own a major convention resort hotel.

The venture was the centerpiece of a settlement to end a three-year Black tourism boycott of South Florida that cost Miami-Dade County about $50 million. "It's a unique opportunity," Peebles said of developing the 422-room, $84 million Art Deco hotel. "The symbolism behind it was important, so my responsibility was to make this hotel meet the expectations that the African-American community as a whole had for it."

The hotel is committed to hiring minorities for half of its staff and at least a quarter of senior management. Its management-level staff is nearly 100 percent African-American, Peebles said. "What we want to do is to have the best and brightest, and hopefully get to a point ... where no one will pay attention whether it's minority owned or not minority owned."