Hotel opportunities
Re the Jan. 1 letter, Saving Miami Beach: As an 18-year resident of Miami Beach’s Collins Park Neighborhood, adjacent to the Convention Center, and as a former travel agent that booked conventions, I see the proposed convention headquarters hotel as necessary and a tremendous opportunity for Miami Beach and my neighborhood.
This new hotel will create more than 1,400 local jobs.
It will also bring countless visitors without cars to our city center who will spend their free time and dollars along Lincoln Road and other nearby cultural destinations, including the New World Symphony, the Holocaust Memorial, the Botanical Garden and the Bass Museum.
Not only is the size of the proposed hotel in line with other similar hotels across the country, it will also contribute an average of $24 million per year to our community to help improve education, mitigate flooding and underground utilities with each taxpayer paying zero.
Let’s recap: jobs for locals, support for local businesses, measurable public benefits and no taxpayer funding. This is a great recipe for saving Miami Beach’s future.
Ray Breslin, Miami Beach
This story was originally published January 6, 2016 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Hotel opportunities."