21 Jul St. Lucie County condo-hotel developer seeks longer stay for some guests as part of site plans
St. Lucie County condo-hotel developer seeks longer stay for some guests as part of site plans
By Keona Gardner of TCPalm
NORTH HUTCHINSON ISLAND — Palm Beach developer George Heaton wants St. Lucie County to exempt some of the rooms at his proposed Orchid Beach Resort condo-hotel from county rules on how long hotel guests can stay, which would allow guests to use the facility as a residence.
Heaton submitted site plans to the county on Tuesday for a 10-story, 160-room hotel, 50 condo-hotel rooms and nine, three-story cottages — each with a pool — near the beach on the site of the former Radisson Hotel, at State Road A1A and Shorewinds Drive.
The project would include a two-story parking garage, a 3,132-square-foot convenience store/market and a 6,385-square-foot restaurant. Both the market and restaurant would be open to public.
“The design of the site facilitates a coastal experience that will be attractive to tourists,” Heaton wrote in the county development application. “The detached condo units will feature the Key West vernacular which will further add to the coastal resort atmosphere.”
He could not be reached for comment.
Condo-hotels look and operate like traditional hotels. Being condominiums, however, allows investors to purchase rooms and share the profit with the hotel when the room is rented.
The county would collect property taxes for any hotel rooms designated condo-hotel. Owners would not qualify for homestead exemptions because the rooms are not their primary residences.
Heaton wants the length-of-stay exemption for 5 percent of the rooms because less than half of the rooms would be identified as condos.
The county allows guests at condo-hotels, with less than half the rooms classified as condos, to stay no more than six months.
The exemption would allow for “greater flexibility and will promote seasonal tourism development for the county,” Heaton wrote in the development application.
North Hutchinson Island has been without a hotel since 2004, when hurricanes Frances and Jeanne destroyed the 150-bed Radisson Hotel.
The owner of the Radisson Hotel sold the property in 2005 for $17.9 million to Greenwood Communities and Resorts of South Carolina, but its plan for condos fell through.
By December 2013, Las Vegas billionaire Phil Ruffin purchased the property for $6 million — $11.9 million less than it had sold for in 2005, according to the Property Appraiser’s Office.
Heaton, who intends to purchase the property from Ruffin, is no stranger to the Treasure Coast.
He owns the Vero Beach Hotel & Spa, about 10 miles north of the Orchid Beach Resort site on the barrier island, and Tarpon Flats, a 38-home subdivision on the west side of State Road A1A, just north of the resort site.
