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Belleview Biltmore draws new suitor

A real estate consultant outlines plans to purchase and preserve the resort.

By LORRI HELFAND
Published June 4, 2005

BELLEAIR - A local real estate consultant unveiled a plan Friday to purchase and preserve the Belleview Biltmore Resort & Spa.

The Friends of the Belleview Biltmore, a local nonprofit group, is working with real estate consultant Rory Hiller, who said he hopes to present an offer in the $40-million range to the resort's owner, Urdang & Associates, in the near future.

In April, DeBartolo Development said it had a contract to buy the hotel, but it has not revealed details of its plan to the public yet.

Hiller, who said he spoke Friday with Urdang & Associates' chief investment officer, Vincent Sanfilippo, plans to renovate the hotel with his team and sell it back to Friends of the Belleview Biltmore in a few years.

"To take this out of the community, it would be like removing the heart of the town," Hiller said. He did not say when a formal meeting with Urdang might take place.

Sanfilippo did not return a call for comment Friday.

Hiller, who did not reveal his partners, said he currently has three backers. Two are local and one lives in Belgium, he said.

Hiller, who represents developers, has worked with David Mack, a partner on the Sandpearl Resort and Belle Harbor projects on Clearwater Beach.

The concept, which Hiller presented from the hotel's original porch entrance, would preserve and renovate the resort's central core as a high-end resort with 83 rooms and replace its north-south wing with 262 hotel-condo units, matching the Victorian style of the current resort.

Hotel-condos are sold to individual owners and rented for part of the year as hotel rooms.

The hotel has about 400 rooms, but only 244 are now used.

High-end units in the renovated resort might run $300 to $400 a night, and the hotel-condos could be about $180 a night, Hiller said.

Hiller said the project would be done in phases so the entire hotel wouldn't have to close.

A parklike area would replace the parking lot on the east side and a parking garage would be built to blend in with the hotel's ambience, Hiller said.

Public meeting rooms and ballrooms would be preserved, but a luxury spa would replace the one the hotel has now. Rae Claire Johnson, who heads Friends of the Belleview Biltmore, approached Hiller a couple months ago, she said.

"I looked for developers with a good reputation," she said.

Hiller said he's been visiting the Biltmore property with contractors to estimate renovation costs. He doesn't have an exact figure yet, but said the project could be $12-million or higher.

The organization plans to save the resort's golf course as well, Johnson said. And they are considering a water taxi that would transport people to the hotel from Clearwater Marina, Indian Rocks Beach and the resort's cabana club on Sand Key.

--Times researcher Catherine Wos contributed to this report. Lorri Helfand can be reached at 445-4155 or at lorri@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 4, 2005, 06:14:28]