How To Kill Three Darlings

This is a story about a really bad real estate decision. This is also a story about a society that has forgotten how to judge character. It’s a story about failing to recognize that something of modest size can be better than something gargantuan. It’s a story about how the brashest personalities should not be given the keys to our cherished icons.

I’ll start it in 2019, when the real estate developer Michael Shvo purchased—through his company SHVO—three side-by-side beachfront Art Deco hotels in South Beach for a combined $242.9 million. Together, the Raleigh, the Richmond, and the South Seas comprise a sizeable chunk of Miami Beach’s most iconic streetscape, where one 1920s mid-rise hotel after another showcases the Art Deco ingenuity of a bygone American optimism.

Shvo planned to merge the three hotels—plus build a new 17-story tower behind them—into a single property. The tower would house 42 condos (including a $150 million penthouse) while the three historic buildings would hold 60 hotel rooms. Consider these numbers against a historical one: When it opened, the Raleigh alone had 113 guest rooms.

Shvo had proposed a city ordinance that would allow him to bypass existing regulations on building heights in Miami Beach’s historic district, insisting that he could not make money on the three hotels without building the modern tower behind them. What he meant was that if his profit was to be egregious, this thing needed to go ultra-luxury, and for the classes that can afford ultra-luxury, he needed to build the tower. The sleight of hand was obvious and could have helped the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board in a decision to reject his application. The three hotels needed renovations, yes, but their bones were great. There was so much in place to preserve and enhance.