By the Sea, By the Sea

Andre Balazs, the hotelier who has the Chateau Marmont in Beverly Hills, Calif., on his list of restored historic properties, has purchased the Lido Spa Hotel, a 106-room resort on Miami Beach's Biscayne Bay.

The property, on Belle Isle at the eastern end of the Venetian Causeway, is one and a half miles away from Miami's South Beach oceanfront. “What is missing on South Beach is a retreat, something to get away to after a night of clubbing and carousing,” Balazs said.

South Beach is the site this fall of VM+SD's International Retail Design Conference, Sept. 17-19, 2003.

Balazs said he envisions the Lido as a restful oasis, spruced-up but faithful in spirit to the original, which thrived for more than three decades as a beachfront vacation spot for tourists, largely Jewish, from New York and other Northern cities. In a report in The New York Times, he declined to give the purchase price or the cost of the face-lift. The bungalow-style hotel, designed in 1961 by Morris Lapidus (the architect who created other Miami monuments like the Fontainebleau Hotel), will retain its facade and such trademarks as the gilded columns, sea green and blue mosaic carport, kidney-shape pool and the pie-wedge lawn that opens onto the bay.

Balazs also owns the Raleigh Hotel, an art deco jewel on Collins Avenue. But unlike its sibling, with the potted palms and tobacco-colored armchairs that recall a moody 1930s glamour, Balazs said the Lido will be “extremely friendly, fresh and gentle,” a hybrid of a traditional bathhouse, with hamam, or Turkish bath, and a modern spa. Alison Spear, who worked on the Raleigh, will be the project architect; Madison Cox, the New York landscape architect, will rejuvenate the grounds.