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Condos coming to Sunspree resort site

This will be the fourth project on the beach for this developer, who doesn't think the old resort hotel can compete in today's vacation destination market.

By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published May 13, 2006

CLEARWATER BEACH - The softening real estate market must not have made its way here yet.

Another luxury condominium complex is coming. And another hotel is going away.

The 210-unit Holiday Inn Sunspree will close July 31, developers of its long-awaited replacement said this week. They believed the 40-year-old hotel could no longer compete with new upscale resorts.

In its place will rise Marquesas, two 150-foot-tall condominium towers inspired by the South Pacific seas.

Work on the $130-million project is scheduled to begin this fall and the first tower would open in late 2008 if developers, JMC Communities of St. Petersburg, keep to their timetable.

The project is JMC's fourth major project on Clearwater Beach and further cements the company's significance to the overhaul of the beach community.

Including Marquesas' 148 units, JMC has built or will build 624 condominiums on the beach and another 250 hotel rooms, all within the last five years.

Work is now continuing on JMC's Sandpearl, a resort hotel-condominium scheduled to open in April or May 2007, bringing with it an expected 130,000 annual visitors and more than $30-million in tourist revenues, JMC president J. Michael Cheezem said Friday.

"We don't have anything else lined up, but it doesn't mean we won't," Cheezem said. "We definitely have enough on our plate right now."

Units in Marquesas are expected to sell for around $1-million or more, JMC officials said. The development, along a 700-foot-long stretch of south Clearwater Beach, will include private beachfront cabanas, an outdoor fireplace barbecue, a sauna, and a garden pavilion, among other amenities. Two-thirds of the units will have direct water views of Clearwater Pass and the Gulf of Mexico.

"This site is its own kind of private oasis," said Cheezem, adding the beach is secluded from most tourists. "It lends itself to a very tranquil and beautiful island atmosphere.

"It's a very intimate setting, something that we haven't had before," Cheezem said.

JMC announced it had purchased the 5.3-acre Sunspree site in 2004 for $18.65-million with plans to replace it with condominiums. Cheezem had considered upgrading the resort, but repairs would cost $20-million and the hotel, he said, would still be obsolete.

The plan for condominiums won city approval in 2005.

Marquesas shares the name of a small volcanic island chain in the South Pacific Ocean and is part of French Polynesia. Author Herman Melville used the islands as the setting for his novel Typee, and a season of CBS' Survivor was filmed there in 2001.

Condominium sales are expected to begin in July, Cheezem said.

[Last modified May 13, 2006, 07:34:14]