From: Making the Biltmore Hurricane-Ready
Riding Out Storms in Style
The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, FL, may well be the nation’s most opulent hurricane accommodation. Designed to host the rich and famous and to draw tourists and clients to Coral Gables, developer George E. Merrick’s planned community was established during the height of southern Florida’s 1920s real-estate boom. In addition to the hotel proper, the Biltmore complex includes a conference center in the adjoining Biltmore Country Club building and an 18-hole golf course—all located on a 150-acre site set within an upscale residential neighborhood.
When the boom went bust during the Great Depression, the hotel’s fortunes declined. It experienced another wave of success from 1938 to 1942, but then the War Department took it over as an army convalescent hospital. In 1947 it became a Veterans Administration Hospital and also the first home of the University of Miami Medical School. Meanwhile, the city kept control of the adjoining golf course.
Former medical students warmly remember classes held in the Biltmore’s east wing, which had air conditioning but no heat. “When temperatures dropped to the upper 30s, classes were canceled. We could look up from surgery and see a PGA golf tournament out the window,” recalls Carl Alving, M.D., now an administrator at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, DC.
After the VA and the university moved out in 1968, the Biltmore stood vacant for more than two decades, housing only vagrants, foxes, and alleged ghosts. In 1986, the city bought the hotel from the US General Services Administration for a $1 government-surplus fee, acquiring the Biltmore Country Club building later.
“The city published a request for proposals to develop the hotel,” says David Brown, Coral Gables city manager. The hospital and medical school left it a mess, with walls and drop ceilings all painted an institutional gray. The renovation cost $52 million.”
Two firms were involved in the Biltmore’s 1986 restoration: the construction firm of Worsham Brothers Co. Inc. and Sovereign Group Ltd., a hotel-management company. Eventually the Sovereign Group went bankrupt, forcing the hotel to close again for several years. During that closure, Barnett Banks of Florida held the hotel’s 99-year lease and covered the costs of maintaining the property while seeking a new operator.
After several rejections, Barnett succeeded in attracting Seaway Hotels Corp. to manage the hotel.
Management Issues
When Seaway took over the Biltmore, the hotel was hard to manage because the adjoining Biltmore Country Club building and the 18-hole Biltmore Golf Course designed by Donald Ross were separately operated, making combined use of their function space difficult. That has changed.
Today Seaway owns the remainder of the Biltmore’s 99-year hotel lease (now including the Country Club building) and has a 25-year contract to manage the golf course.
“Seaway is responsible for upkeep and maintenance of the hotel property. They cover the cost of the hotel and pay us rent—$1.5 million to $1.6 million a year—based on gross earnings from all sources,” says Brown.
The hotel proper has 36,000 square feet of function space, and the Conference Center of the Americas in the Biltmore Country Club building has an additional 40,000 square feet—a total of 76,000 square feet.
Hurricane Andrew
Seaway took over the Biltmore toward the end of June 1992, just two months before Hurricane Andrew struck. Biltmore executives rode out Andrew in the hotel, along with local politicians, staff of the City of Coral Gables Emergency Management Center (then located in the hotel), and displaced residents. (The city has since moved its emergency management operations elsewhere, but a small generator in the hotel still supplies power to city-owned emergency equipment on the roof.)
“The Biltmore did not have much damage after Andrew, but we were filled to the rafters with displaced families—who lacked housing or electrical power—and with insurance adjusters,” says Dennis Doucette, the hotel’s current general manager, who was Seaway’s regional food and beverage director when Andrew struck.
“We opened our doors at a very trying time,” he says. “Frankly, we weren’t prepared to have a full house. We had only emergency generator power to support safety lights and emergency elevators.”
As Hurricane Andrew approached southern Florida, Brown was on vacation in North Carolina, while T. Gene Prescott, chief executive officer of The Seaway Group, principal shareholder of Seaway Hotels Corp., was in New York.
“We knew Andrew would not vary, so Gene flew and I drove back to Miami,” Brown recalls. “We both expected Andrew to be a Category Four or Category Five storm.
“I ran the city’s emergency management center in the hotel. We had several major functions: rescue, reconnaissance and damage assessment, and debris removal. After the storm, we discovered that more than 100 city employees and their families were homeless. I asked Gene if we could utilize two floors of the hotel’s east wing to house them.
“For a few weeks, we were a little city. The hotel was closed. A Coral Gables police officer was appointed shelter manager. Guests cooked their own meals and did their own laundry. Donations came in to the city, and we set up a basic commissary PX station so that as employees left the hotel they had something to start with.
“During the recovery process, the city fed employees working 12-hour shifts, and their families. We fed 1,800 people for 89 days. We knew that, to recover, we had to take care of our employees so they could take care of our city.”
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The Seaway management team at The Biltmore learned lessons from Hurricane Andrew that have since been applied to other hurricanes. “Even with the departure of Coral Gables EOC, the hotel recognizes its responsibility to local government and residents,” Doucette says.
In 2005, Katrina struck the Greater Miami area on August 25, followed by Wilma on October 24. “We monitored Katrina and thought it would only be a Category One or maybe Category Two storm. We weren’t prepared for ... Katrina’s back side,” says Brown.
Coral Gables, which calls itself “The City Beautiful,” is proud of its tree cover. The storms blew down many of its beautiful banyan trees, including a number on the Biltmore property. The hotel and country club buildings also sustained roof damage, and the hotel had only emergency power for about a week after each storm.
March-April 2007
From: Making the Biltmore Hurricane-Ready
Riding Out Storms in Style
The Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, FL, may well be the nation’s most opulent hurricane accommodation. Designed to host the rich and famous and to draw tourists and clients to Coral Gables, developer George E. Merrick’s planned community was established during the height of southern Florida’s 1920s real-estate boom. In addition to the hotel proper, the Biltmore complex includes a conference center in the adjoining Biltmore Country Club building and an 18-hole golf course—all located on a 150-acre site set within an upscale residential neighborhood.
When the boom went bust during the Great Depression, the hotel’s fortunes declined. It experienced another wave of success from 1938 to 1942, but then the War Department took it over as an army convalescent hospital. In 1947 it became a Veterans Administration Hospital and also the first home of the University of Miami Medical School. Meanwhile, the city kept control of the adjoining golf course.
Former medical students warmly remember classes held in the Biltmore’s east wing, which had air conditioning but no heat. “When temperatures dropped to the upper 30s, classes were canceled. We could look up from surgery and see a PGA golf tournament out the window,” recalls Carl Alving, M.D., now an administrator at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, DC.
After the VA and the university moved out in 1968, the Biltmore stood vacant for more than two decades, housing only vagrants, foxes, and alleged ghosts. In 1986, the city bought the hotel from the US General Services Administration for a $1 government-surplus fee, acquiring the Biltmore Country Club building later.
“The city published a request for proposals to develop the hotel,” says David Brown, Coral Gables city manager. The hospital and medical school left it a mess, with walls and drop ceilings all painted an institutional gray. The renovation cost $52 million.”
Two firms were involved in the Biltmore’s 1986 restoration: the construction firm of Worsham Brothers Co. Inc. and Sovereign Group Ltd., a hotel-management company. Eventually the Sovereign Group went bankrupt, forcing the hotel to close again for several years. During that closure, Barnett Banks of Florida held the hotel’s 99-year lease and covered the costs of maintaining the property while seeking a new operator.
After several rejections, Barnett succeeded in attracting Seaway Hotels Corp. to manage the hotel.
Management Issues
When Seaway took over the Biltmore, the hotel was hard to manage because the adjoining Biltmore Country Club building and the 18-hole Biltmore Golf Course designed by Donald Ross were separately operated, making combined use of their function space difficult. That has changed.
Today Seaway owns the remainder of the Biltmore’s 99-year hotel lease (now including the Country Club building) and has a 25-year contract to manage the golf course.
“Seaway is responsible for upkeep and maintenance of the hotel property. They cover the cost of the hotel and pay us rent—$1.5 million to $1.6 million a year—based on gross earnings from all sources,” says Brown.
The hotel proper has 36,000 square feet of function space, and the Conference Center of the Americas in the Biltmore Country Club building has an additional 40,000 square feet—a total of 76,000 square feet.
Hurricane Andrew
Seaway took over the Biltmore toward the end of June 1992, just two months before Hurricane Andrew struck. Biltmore executives rode out Andrew in the hotel, along with local politicians, staff of the City of Coral Gables Emergency Management Center (then located in the hotel), and displaced residents. (The city has since moved its emergency management operations elsewhere, but a small generator in the hotel still supplies power to city-owned emergency equipment on the roof.)
“The Biltmore did not have much damage after Andrew, but we were filled to the rafters with displaced families—who lacked housing or electrical power—and with insurance adjusters,” says Dennis Doucette, the hotel’s current general manager, who was Seaway’s regional food and beverage director when Andrew struck.
“We opened our doors at a very trying time,” he says. “Frankly, we weren’t prepared to have a full house. We had only emergency generator power to support safety lights and emergency elevators.”
As Hurricane Andrew approached southern Florida, Brown was on vacation in North Carolina, while T. Gene Prescott, chief executive officer of The Seaway Group, principal shareholder of Seaway Hotels Corp., was in New York.
“We knew Andrew would not vary, so Gene flew and I drove back to Miami,” Brown recalls. “We both expected Andrew to be a Category Four or Category Five storm.
“I ran the city’s emergency management center in the hotel. We had several major functions: rescue, reconnaissance and damage assessment, and debris removal. After the storm, we discovered that more than 100 city employees and their families were homeless. I asked Gene if we could utilize two floors of the hotel’s east wing to house them.
“For a few weeks, we were a little city. The hotel was closed. A Coral Gables police officer was appointed shelter manager. Guests cooked their own meals and did their own laundry. Donations came in to the city, and we set up a basic commissary PX station so that as employees left the hotel they had something to start with.
“During the recovery process, the city fed employees working 12-hour shifts, and their families. We fed 1,800 people for 89 days. We knew that, to recover, we had to take care of our employees so they could take care of our city.”
The Seaway management team at The Biltmore learned lessons from Hurricane Andrew that have since been applied to other hurricanes. “Even with the departure of Coral Gables EOC, the hotel recognizes its responsibility to local government and residents,” Doucette says.
In 2005, Katrina struck the Greater Miami area on August 25, followed by Wilma on October 24. “We monitored Katrina and thought it would only be a Category One or maybe Category Two storm. We weren’t prepared for ... Katrina’s back side,” says Brown.
Coral Gables, which calls itself “The City Beautiful,” is proud of its tree cover. The storms blew down many of its beautiful banyan trees, including a number on the Biltmore property. The hotel and country club buildings also sustained roof damage, and the hotel had only emergency power for about a week after each storm.