The Miami Beach Resort and Spa is a historic resort hotel opened in 1963 as the Doral Hotel On-The-Ocean on the famous Millionaire's Row at 4833

Collins Avenue Collins Avenue, partly co-signed State Road A1A, is a major thoroughfare in South Florida, United States. The road runs parallel to the Atlantic Ocean in Miami Beach, Florida, one block west. It also runs through the cities of Surfside and Su ...

Miami Beach, Florida Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on natural and artificial island, man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the ...

History

Designed by architect Melvin Grossman and constructed by builder Robert Turchin, the hotel, also known as the Doral Beach Hotel, was named for the owner's wife Doris and the owner

Alfred Kaskel Alfred Kaskel (1901–1968) was an American real estate developer and hotelier, best known for founding Doral Hotels and Resorts, Doral Construction, and Carol Management, which developed, owned, and managed a number of hotels, apartment buildings ...

. The hotel opened on February 15, 1963, as the sister hotel to the Doral Country Club on the mainland (now in

Doral, Florida Doral is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. One of 34 municipalities in the county, it is located west of Miami International Airport and west of Downtown Miami. Doral occupies bordered on the west by the Ronald Reagan Tu ...

), where the

Doral Open The Doral Open was a professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour in the southeastern United States. It was played annually for 45 seasons, from 1962 to 2006, on the "Blue Monster" course at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Doral, Florida, a suburb w ...

was played until 2006. The Doral Beach Hotel was long considered the most elegant and luxurious hotel in the area. It won several of the coveted Mobil Five Star awards. The hotel hosted the headquarters of

George McGovern George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian and South Dakota politician who was a U.S. representative and three-term U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 p ...

during the

1972 Democratic National Convention The 1972 Democratic National Convention was the presidential nominating convention of the Democratic Party for the 1972 presidential election. It was held at Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach, Florida, also the host city of the Repu ...

. The Doral was home away from home for movie stars and presidents. Several scenes from the hit 1972 film '' The Heartbreak Kid'' were shot on location at the hotel. The movie shows the lobby, room 1704, the bar adjacent to the Starlight Roof restaurant on the 18th floor of the hotel, and the pool area and beach. In the 1990s the hotel changed hands several times. It was first purchased from the original family in the early 1990s by a French company and renamed the Doral Ocean Beach Resort. The French OBR company then sold it to Interstate Hotels in 1997 and it became a

Westin Westin Hotels & Resorts is an American upscale hotel chain owned by Marriott International. , the Westin Brand has 226 properties with 82,608 rooms in multiple countries in addition to 58 hotels with 15,741 rooms in the pipeline. History Wester ...

, The Westin Resort Miami Beach. In September 1998, Interstate Hotels was purchased by

Wyndham International Wyndham International, previously Patriot American Hospitality, was an American hotel company based in Dallas, Texas. History Patriot American Hospitality was formed in April 1995 as a real estate investment trust (REIT) and made its initial publi ...

and the property was renamed the Wyndham Miami Beach Resort. In 2006 the

Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate b ...

, a large conglomerate, purchased Wyndham International. Some of the Wyndham hotels were merged into

LXR Luxury Resorts LXR may refer to: * LXR Cross Referencer, a software tool * Luxury Resorts, owned by the Blackstone Group. * Air Luxor (ICAO code), a former airline * Liver X receptor The liver X receptor (LXR) is a member of the nuclear receptor family of ...

, another chain owned by Blackstone. Today, the hotel is known as the Miami Beach Resort and Spa, an LXR hotel. The property was closed in 2019 by the new owners, the Chetrit family.https://therealdeal.com/miami/2019/05/01/chetrit-shuts-down-oceanfront-miami-beach-hotel-for-major-renovation/ OBR retained a portion of the property adjacent to the hotel when it was sold to Interstate. Originally containing a parking lot, two tennis courts and additional beach access, OBR built the Grand Beach Hotel on this land in 2009. In addition, OBR retained the rights to the Doral name.

Sources

ciudad doral newspaper

References

{{coord, 25.823994, -80.121451, display=title Hotels in Miami Beach, Florida Hotels established in 1963 Hotel buildings completed in 1963 1963 establishments in Florida