Scheduled to open later this year, the Edgewater Hotel will contain 44,740 sf of hotel and restaurant space on a 13,000-sf lot at 1410 Ocean Drive. Of the total, about 5,200 sf of ground floor space is being designed for restaurant use.

South Florida hospitality industry estimators tell GlobeSt.com it costs about $200,000 per room to build a typical four-star luxury hotel in the Miami Beach market. Not figuring in the cost of the restaurant or the land, those estimates indicate the corporation is investing about $10 million to build the property.

"It's already generated a lot of interest and activity, because there are so very few properties newly constructed between 15th Street and Ocean Drive," Ed Hibshman, managing director of Miami-based Beacon Realty Advisors Inc., tells GlobeSt.com. "And it would certainly be considered a luxury hotel."

Beacon Realty is representing the corporation, which is considering a number of deals including purchase-money financing, a joint-venture arrangement or lease. The owner also is considering either opening the site as a condominium or even a time-share operation, Hibshman says.

Public records show the property belongs to 1410 Ocean Drive Inc., a Florida corporation controlled by Miami Beach businessmen Jay Weinberg, the company president, and Scott Weinberg, a director.

Miami-Dade County property records show the corporation acquired the oceanfront property, about 2 blocks off Collins Avenue and just north of 14th Street, in 1997 for $2.65 million. It had a 1999 market value of about $2.91 million.