May 31, 2005
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Richard Patterson for The New York Times
A new owner wants to tap the glamour of the 1950′s Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach, to help establish a chain of resorts
May 25, 2005
Taking 1950′s Miami Beach Chic to the Desert
By ROBERT JOHNSON
By design and by legendary reputation, the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach is truly one of a kind. The Fontainebleau, South Florida’s largest hotel, opened in 1954 with its Morris Lapidus-conceived curves that accented the resort’s shoreline as surely as a sheer dress clinging to a fashion model.
Hollywood came calling in the 1950′s and 1960′s, when Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin played, on stage and off. Those were the heady days when Jackie Gleason based his hit TV variety show there. And Sean Connery as 007 roamed the pool deck in “Goldfinger.”
But now the Fontainebleau is about to become a brand extension-2,500 miles from the original-and on the Strip instead of the beach. The closest wave at the planned second Fontainebleau in Las Vegas, on the north end of the Strip close to the venerable Riviera hotel and casino, will be at an old water park nearby. Still, the developer of the new Fontainebleau hopes to create a splash with promises of celebrity chefs, a fancy spa and high-profile entertainment.
The Florida Fontainebleau’s new owner, the developer Jeffrey Soffer, announced the plans this month for the Las Vegas resort, which will be a combination casino, hotel and condominium. Construction is expected to cost $1.5 billion to $2 billion, ground is to be broken next year and the 4,000-room hotel is to open in the second half of 2008.
“The Fontainebleau is a magical name, an icon known all over the country and the world,” Mr. Soffer said.
Mr. Soffer, who is 37, concedes that the Fontainebleau might not have the same name recognition for people in his age group. “It was a very wonderful and famous hotel in its day,” he said. “Obviously I wasn’t born when it was that innovative. But when I was a kid growing up in Miami Beach, my parents and their friends would say that if you didn’t go to the Fontainebleau, you were nobody.”
That raises an essential question about whether a hotel brand can be successfully extended four decades after its heyday.
Very likely, said Dave Schwartz, an assistant professor who is coordinator of gaming studies research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “The Fontainebleau name has an appeal to an older generation,” he said. “That gives it a base and a start, but it doesn’t necessarily limit the appeal. If the marketing is done right, they can appeal to a whole new younger audience and add to the base.”
Still, there is a risk that many Las Vegas patrons from the West Coast are not as familiar with the Fontainebleau name as are people from the Midwest and the Northeast. “If you ask me what famous hotel names I can think of, Fontainebleau wouldn’t be on the list,” said Thomas Brown, senior consultant at the Power Decisions Group, a San Francisco-based brand research company. “The Las Vegas visitors who are from the West probably didn’t go to Florida very much in the 1950′s and 1960′s, and the Fontainebleau name may not resonate with them.”
Yet clever marketing can enable such customers to discover the brand, Mr. Brown said. “The name itself, Fontainebleau, has a certain phonetic and evocative quality as a word, even if you don’t speak French. It’s a name that has the quality of sophistication, and there’s a melodic flow to the brand, almost like Mercedes-Benz.”
Fontainebleau is a small town in northern France, a 40-minute drive from Paris. The town’s most famous structure, the Royal Chateau de Fontainebleau, was built in the 1500′s by King Francis I as a summer palace.
Mr. Soffer has hired Glenn Schaeffer, who before last month was president of the Mandalay Resort Group, to lead his Las Vegas venture. His tenure there ended in April when MGM Mirage bought Mandalay for $7.9 billion. Mr. Schaeffer, who is president and chief executive of Fontainebleau Resorts, is credited with making the Mandalay worth its purchase price.
His assignment with Fontainebleau Resorts is to start building a chain with its second location in Las Vegas and eventually more destinations in other countries, which the company would not yet identify.
Although some Fontainebleau resorts will not have casinos – the original in Florida does not – condominium units are likely to be a big part of the global concept, said Mr. Soffer, who is the chief executive and majority partner of Turnberry Associates in Aventura, Fla. Turnberry bought the Fontainebleau in Florida from Hilton hotels this month.
Turnberry plans a $350 million renovation of the original Fontainebleau, expanding it to 1,750 rooms from the current 1,300. In addition, a 36-floor condominium tower, called the Fontainebleau II, opened nearby this year after selling all its residences – at prices ranging from $400,000 to $1 million. Plans for another neighboring condo tower, the 18-story Fontainebleau III, were recently announced.
It is this success that Turnberry is hoping to capitalize on in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
“I think the Fontainebleau concept can work largely because they got the right person to run it,” said Mr. Schwartz, the university professor. “Glenn Schaeffer made Mandalay Bay synonymous with hip and fun on the Strip. Put that talent together with a brand name that a lot of people already know, and there’s tremendous potential.”
Mr. Schaeffer could not agree more. “The original Fontainebleau was very Las Vegas in its personality,” he said. “So it will be coming home in a way when we build the second one.”
He has already hired other former Mandalay Bay executives who were part of his team there and commissioned an art critic to research what the Strip’s Fontainebleau should look like. The exterior “will certainly be reminiscent of Morris Lapidus, who was one of the most important commercial architects of the century,” Mr. Schaeffer said.
The new resort’s interiors will be “International style meets Hollywood stage set,” he said.
Of course over-the-top architecture is the norm in Las Vegas, where casinos take the shape of everything from Caesar’s Palace to an Egyptian pyramid. There’s a periodically erupting volcano in front of the Mirage and life-size pirate ships battling outside the Treasure Island.
The Miami Beach Fontainebleau did not have that kind of competition when it came to distinguishing itself from commercial landmarks. The beachfront Eden Roc is also Lapidus-designed and its name does have a nice ring, but it pales in comparison with the Bellagio on the Strip, where giant fountains dwarf the water-spewing wonders of Europe that inspired their look. And the Bellagio’s creator, Steve Wynn, is gaining new attention with the recent opening of his new $2.7 billion resort, called simply Wynn Las Vegas.
Mr. Schaeffer said he was well aware that the new Fontainebleau “won’t be the most expensive property on the Strip, but we intend to be the most stylish.”
