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Work to begin on Hyatt project

Tourism officials hope that Aqualea, along with two other resorts, will lure upscale tourists.

By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published November 24, 2005

CLEARWATER - Construction of a Hyatt, the second major resort hotel planned for Clearwater Beach, will begin in the spring in time for a 2008 opening, the developer has said.

The 250-room resort, called Aqualea, will be a condominium-hotel hybrid, with rooms individually owned but rented to visitors.

The resort sales will start next month, said the project's developer, Neil Rauenhorst. The news comes after a yearlong marketing campaign across the U.S. and Europe and on the heels of the settlement of a lawsuit that would have derailed the $100-million hotel.

The suit, brought by two city residents, had alleged that the Hyatt would use city-owned property illegally. It was settled after developers agreed to minor concessions.

"Now is the time," Rauenhorst said in his first extensive remarks following the settlement. "The city's plan has been in the works for eight years. This resort is the centerpiece of that design."

Work on another major resort, the $140-million Sandpearl, is already under way farther north on the beach. That project, with its 253 hotel rooms, is scheduled to open in 2007, according to its developer, JMC Communities.

A third resort, a 350-hotel-room, 75-condo-unit project planned by Tampa entrepreneur Kiran Patel, is expected to rise next to the Hyatt on S Gulfview Boulevard. Developers received a city permit last week to begin constructing their condominium sales office. A timetable for the project has not been released.

Together, the three resorts will stock the beach with 853 four-star hotel rooms, a key to luring higher-spending tourists, city and local tourism officials believe.

"We're going to see a renaissance of tourism here on Clearwater Beach," said Sheila Cole, executive director of the Clearwater Beach Chamber of Commerce. "We're certainly upscaling the beach and giving people lots of great choices."

Rauenhorst will hold an invitation-only party next week to launch the Hyatt project. From the hotel grounds, formerly the site of several small motels, the preview will detail how the resort-condos will be purchased.

In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, he declined to reveal purchase prices or room rates in the new hotel, which will also have 18 standard condominiums. Marketing materials say sales prices will range from $500,000 to $2-million.

The resort will be timed to open along with Beach Walk, a more than $20-million project to overhaul S Gulfview into a winding pedestrian promenade, Rauenhorst said. Aqualea marketing materials include pictures and animated renderings of the public works project.

The city's commitment is why both Hyatt and Rauenhorst are interested in the area in the first place, the developer said.

"The plan is for a half-mile stretch of beach with new restaurants, new retail spaces, new resorts," Rauenhorst said. "There's nothing like this happening anywhere I know of."

Along with the hotel, the resort will include a 400-space public parking garage to help offset the lost streetside parking spaces as part of the Beach Walk plan.

The hotel will have two pools: one on the eighth floor and another on the roof of the 150-foot-tall building. There will be air-conditioned cabanas ringing the main pool deck, with a television and wet bar available to owners and guests.

There's also a spa, a poolside grille, outdoor cafes and a more formal Hyatt-signature restaurant planned as part of the project.

Rauenhorst, 51, is president of NJR Development, a Tampa company he formed in 2002 after 14 years as president of Opus South, the local development company planning to replace the Calvary Baptist Church downtown with condominiums.

He bought the rights to the Hyatt project in February for $18.5-million.

301 S Gulfview Blvd.

Managed by Hyatt

250 hotel rooms, 18 condominiums

Studio, 1- and 2-bedroom suites

Private poolside cabanas, beach club

[Last modified November 24, 2005, 00:18:19]