If condominium hotels are simply hotels with multiple owner financing, why is it causing so much dissension on Pensacola Beach?

Julian MacQueen of Innisfree Hotels and Robert Rinke of Portofino were the guests of NAIOP, the National Association of Industrial and Office Professionals, Wednesday, May 16.

MacQueen is one of Pensacola Beach’s main hotel developers. He owns the Hampton Inn and the Hilton Garden Inn, which is converting to a more upscale Hilton within the year.

He says it’s difficult to get hotel financing, and that more hotels will be build on the island if the Santa Rosa Island Authority allows multiple financing options called condo hotels.

MacQueen said the operational definition for hotels works “just fine” across the state of Florida, but in 1996, Robert Rinke led a process to redefine the condo hotel process, and for 10 years MacQueen’s been trying to bring it back to what it was before.

“We want to compete with the rest of Florida on an even playing field,” MacQueen said. “We cannot legislate development. The market’s going to dictate what’s built out here.”

MacQueen said the condo hotel rules inhibit the growth of Pensacola Beach.

He said the Island Authority has been taking great pains to sort out the issue, but can tell on a case by case issue what is a condo and what is a hotel.

Rinke, taking the side against changing the rules limiting hotel size and amenities and length of stay told the crowd how the residential cap is met at Pensacola Beach, with Portofino holding the approval to build the final 234 units.

He said that aging baby boomers are creating a demand for a residential property with resort amenities such as pools, concierge services, restaurants and more.

“Ninety-five percent of hotels are less than 400 square feet, but there is a real demand for 1,200-2,000 square feet so they can live their life in a lifestyle property,” Rinke said. “It’s a proven commodity and there is a strong market for it.”

Rinke cited hotel rooms at Sandestin which are 500 square feet each and the old Clarion property, which had units at just 450 square feet.

Currently, the property owners of the former Clarion are proposing a “fractional ownership” resort with hotel rooms averaging 1,250 square feet. Fractional resorts sell each unit to eight buyers who can stay up to six weeks each or trade for units in other markets.

Rinke said the bigger issue is land value, with land leased for hotels selling at $15,000- 30,000 per unit while land leased for condos sells at $300,000-$400,000 per unit.

“It’s now $100,000- 150,000 unit,” Rinke said.

MacQueen said the limit on the length of stay is particularly troublesome.

While the owner can’t stay more than two weeks per year under the current proposal, “anyone else can stay as long as they like,” MacQueen said.

He added that there will be no “occupancy police” to enforce the rule, and that when a corporation buys a unit, the rule applying to the owner’s length of stay becomes even more convoluted.

Information from: www.gulfbreezenews.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Condo, Real Estate. Tags: Clarion concierge services Condo condo hotel Condo Hotels condominium hotel condominium hotels development Florida Garden Inn Hampton Hampton Inn Hilton Hilton Garden Inn hotel developer hotel developers Hotel Rooms Hotels Occupancy Pensacola Property Resort restaurant Sandestin Tofino . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.