Jeffrey Soffer’s plans to expand meeting and event space at his iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach resort are getting a financial boost.
An affiliate of Soffer’s Fontainebleau Development in Aventura secured a $72.8 million construction loan from Goldman Sachs for the development at 4360 and 4370 Collins Avenues, according to records and Vizzda data. Build a five-story event center.
This week, the developer filed a ground-breaking notice with the city of Miami Beach. Last October, Soffer’s company broke ground, removing the surface parking lot and preparing the site soil for vertical construction, records show.
The 50,000-square-foot event center is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2025, according to a press release. Linked by a skybridge to the Tresor Tower in Fontainebleau, Miami Beach, the building will feature an 18,000-square-foot ballroom that can be divided into four smaller spaces. The project will also feature an additional 9,000 square feet of ballroom space, 10 breakout rooms and a 9,000 square foot rooftop deck.
The event center will feature floor-to-ceiling windows and architectural elements inspired by the work of Morris Lapidus, the late architect who designed Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau, according to a press release. The hotel opened in 1954.
In 2005, Aventura-based Turnberry Associates acquired the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel, which has 200,000 square feet of on-site meeting and event space. In 2019, Soffer left his family business to form the Fontainebleau Development Company. His new company became the owner of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach and the JW Marriott Turnberry Miami Resort & Spa in Aventura. His holdings also include the Big Easy Casino in Hallandale Beach and the Miami Beach building that housed the recently closed Story nightclub.
In Las Vegas, Soffer is finishing the rebirth of a failed project he started in Sin City shortly before the 2008 real estate crash. Soffer’s firm expects to complete the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, a new 67-story hotel on the city’s prestigious strip, in the final quarter of this year.
Soffer’s Las Vegas development entity went bankrupt in 2009, and billionaire Carl Icahn bought the unfinished project a year later for about $150 million. Icahn then sold it for $600 million to a joint venture led by New York-based Witkoff. Witkoff sold the project to Fontainebleau Development and Koch Real Estate Investments in 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
