The condo tower Uday Lele envisions could be the belle of Clearwater Beach. But first, he had to race against the clock.
By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published December 4, 2005
[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
Uday Lele, 54, holds onto his cap while driving his 2005 Ferrari SuperAmerica F1 along Gulf Boulevard on Sand Key this fall.
[Artist rendering]
An artist's rendering shows the Enchantment condo project to be built on Clearwater Beach near the Sand Key Bridge.
CLEARWATER - Uday Lele has never wavered. His 150-foot-tall Enchantment condominium tower will be the grandest ever built on Clearwater Beach.
Then his architect jumps in.
There's a problem.
It's a Friday in June, and plans for Enchantment are already behind Lele's ambitious schedule.
Lele - at 54, a savvy businessman but a novice developer - rests his elbows on the boardroom table and rubs his hands on his bald head. His $10,000 platinum watch sparkles across the room.
Around him, engineers unfurl pages of design drawings. As planned, the condo tower is 2 feet too tall. His team has a week to fix this problem.
Fail, and Lele loses millions of dollars.
* * *
The day had been months in the making.
It started during Lele's car trips back and forth on Gulfview Boulevard, past Don Seaton's 110-room Best Western hotel. He noticed how the hotel sits on Clearwater Pass, near the southern end of Clearwater Beach. Clearwater Harbor is to the east. The Gulf of Mexico is to the west.
He thought: from the small sandy beach behind the hotel, you could watch both sunrise and sunset. Lele, a world traveler who flew more than 250,000 miles some years, said Seaton's property rivaled the beauty of Niagara Falls.
So he wrote a letter to Seaton. He wanted to buy the hotel and build condominiums in its place.
Seaton and his family had run the Best Western Sea Wake Resort for 33 years. Seaton, 67, has been a former Clearwater Chamber of Commerce president and one of the original members of the Pinellas County Tourist Development Council.
Running hotels had been his life. Seaton had been Best Western's chairman of the board in 1998. Could he walk away from that?
He talked to Lele, a man he had heard about but not met.
For 1.45 acres, Lele would pay $25-million.
"There's a time and place for everything," Seaton said.
Sold.
* * *
Growing up in India, Lele wanted to be a writer.
"How are you going to eat?" his father would ask.
So Lele became a businessman. He ran his father's steel foundry and a car repair shop as a teenager. Lele attended the University of Bombay, now the University of Mumbai, and earned degrees in chemistry and physics.
Starting with $20, he formed a chemical company and turned it into a $54-million business in eight years. He clashed with the government when he created a prophylactic that sold better than the one it dispensed. At 32, he was the youngest CEO whose company traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Lele moved to America in 1990 and started a candy company. As president of Dayhoff LLC, he invented a fruit-juice-filled confection called Juicee Gummee.
Lele was the first person, he says, to inject fruit juice into a gummee candy.
The business moved from Maryland to Clearwater in 1999. Within three years, revenues were $30-million annually.
He only had one business ever fail: a tire-retreading venture. He is tinkering with writing a book about successful business practices.
"I have never chased money in my lifetime," said Lele, who lives in a 9,000-square-foot Belleair Shores home and drives a rare $290,000 Ferrari Supe rAmerica. "Profit is a hybrid of excellence and execution."
For the past two years, Lele has become a developer, building a trio of small condominium projects on the north end of Clearwater Beach.
But Enchantment is different altogether.
* * *
Five architects submitted concepts for the one-of-a-kind condominium project. The goal was simple: to make the 90-unit condominium tower the signature structure of Clearwater Beach.
Richard Gillett, a Sarasota architect who orchestrated several Clearwater Beach projects, including Mandalay Beach Club and Belle Harbor, wanted to take the building away from a traditional box structure. He won the job.
"The concept was not to a straight box, but to do a tower that curves as much as possible to highlight the views," said Gillett.
Normally, condo towers have 140-degree views, Gillett said. Enchantment was designed with views of 270 degrees. Each unit would have its own elevator.
A 60-foot wide, 68-foot-tall portico would split the building in half.
Domes would shape the building's top.
Other lavish touches are planned everywhere. Concierge service. A marble and bronze sculpture garden. A spa. A champagne lounge. A two-story lobby.
Lele even wants to build shooting water fountains inspired by the Wynn and the Bellagio in Las Vegas. That's where he surprised his wife, Aditi, with a birthday celebration that included childhood friends from India.
* * *
Two feet doesn't sound like much, especially in a tower that was planned to be 149 feet, 6 inches tall.
But Lele knows immediately it could cost him. The city imposed a deadline for condo projects on the beach. If things aren't straightened out in a week, Lele's facing business failure No. 2.
Surveying errors created a problem in an engineering map.
The map is off by 2 feet, 4 inches.
"What'd I miss?" asks Lele's land-use lawyer, Ed Armstrong, entering the conference room after a brief interruption.
"We've lost 2 feet, 4 inches since you stepped out," says Ed Hooper, a former Clearwater city commissioner turned development consultant.
Armstrong tilts his head and crinkles his face in astonishment.
People in the room laugh.
Lele leans back in his chair.
"How are we going to fix this?" Armstrong asks.
Hooper says the building can be 150 feet tall and still meet city regulations. He doesn't like to use every last inch, but in this case he has little choice.
They do math in their head. Taking 22 inches out of the building will get them back down to 150 feet, the absolute maximum.
How about knocking 2 inches off each floor, Gillett suggests.
No, Lele says.
"I'm selling 10-foot ceilings. Nine-foot, 9-inch ceilings or whatever mean nothing to me."
Lele lets Gillett rework the 4,000-square foot penthouse. Those ceilings will shrink by 6 inches to 10 feet.
Still 16 inches to find. Gillett thinks he can shave some space in the parking levels.
For the condo floors, "you still may be looking at 9 feet, 11 15/16 inches," Gillett says.
"I'm using the word approximate now," Lele concedes. "Done."
Armstrong says he has "16 percent confidence" Enchantment will come together.
Lele swivels in his chair to face him.
Only kidding, Armstrong says.
* * *
Decision day comes three months later in September, when Enchantment was unveiled for the city's Community Development Board. The seven-member board is the project's final hurdle.
But this time, there is little drama.
In minutes, the board triumphantly approves the project, calling it stunning.
Lele plans to open his sales center at the hotel this month. He already has a guaranteed $120-million construction loan and expects to break ground next summer.
Enchantment could open in 2007. Lele expects condominiums to sell for up to $5-million each.
Until then, he's running the 110-room Best Western, where room rates run $140 a night.
He has changed the menu at the hotel restaurant, which offered standard American fare. He thinks he found a way to make it more profitable.
