UPDATED, Sept. 17, 12 p.m.: DolphinBay Hospitality, a joint venture between Dolphin Capital Partners and Baywood Hotels, closed on the site of a planned Moxy by Marriott hotel in Wynwood, The Real Deal has learned.
The partners paid $11 million, or about $630 per square foot, for the 17,500-square-foot site at 255 Northwest 25th Street, according to Tony Arellano of Dwntwn Realty Advisors. Arellano and Devlin Marinoff brokered the deal.
David Grutman and Groot Hospitality will handle the food and beverage operations for the 120-room hotel’s 28,000 square feet of restaurant space, including a ground-floor restaurant and rooftop concept.
The property will mark the second Moxy hotel in Florida, followed by a 202-room Moxy under construction at 915 Washington Avenue in Miami Beach. The Marriott brand is targeted toward millennials in gateway cities.
The Wynwood Moxy project has site plan approval and construction is expected to begin in the first quarter of next year, said Pierre Charalambides, founding partner of Dolphin Capital Partners. Kobi Karp Architects is the architect and iCrave, a New York City-based interior design firm, is handling the interiors.
The Wynwood hotel will be built east of Second Avenue, a block north of the Related Group and East End Capital’s Wynwood 25 apartment complex.
Dolphin Capital Partners has a portfolio of 12 large-scale residential resorts under development in Greece, Cyprus, Croatia and Turkey, according to its website. In 2016, the hospitality development firm sold the Playa Grande Golf and Resort project and its Aman resort, both in the Dominican Republic, for $150.5 million to Third Point LLC, a New York-based hedge fund founded by Dan Loeb.
Baywood Hotels, which will manage the Wynwood Moxy, has been active in South Florida. The Columbia, Maryland-based hotel firm, led by Chris Desai, owns and operates more than $1 billion in assets, according to its website. Earlier this year, Baywood paid $10.5 million for land within the Waterford at Blue Lagoon office park where it’s planning a 225-room hotel.
A number of apartment and office projects are under construction or have recently been completed in Wynwood, but no new hotels have been built.
Philip Levine and Scott Robins are planning a 90-key hotel with 92 apartments at 35 Northwest 27th Street, and Alex Karakhanian and Wynwood Investment Partners are planning a 12-story, 125-room hotel with office and retail at 51 Northwest 29th Street. Last year, developers Eduardo Vargas and Andres Hogg filed plans for a five-story, 72-key hotel at 111 Northwest 26th Street, also near the Wynwood Walls.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the square footage of the land and the food and beverage space.