WGM: Mayfair Hotel Sold, Fresh Market NoBe, & the Economics Of Summer Restauranting
+ The $3 Billion Bet That Refused to Die & Ocean House Surfside
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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 6.9.26
On My Mind: Yesterday I turned 47.
Some years bring life-altering wins. Others bring deafening failures. I’ve had both. What I’ve learned is that the journey doesn’t lead to the destination — it is the destination.
Beach Business
The New Conquistadors: The Smartest Hotel Group You’ve Never Heard Of Just Made Its Move
Dean Group bought the Gates a few months ago and now they bought the Mayfair.
North Beach Update: A Gourmet Grocer is finally on the Way
A grocery store that matched the neighborhood’s ambition. A place where you could buy a $14 jar of tomato sauce and feel genuinely good about it.
Magic City: The $3 Billion Bet That Refused to Die
Zangrillo is partnering with Plaza Equity Partners on a proposed 7.8 million-square-foot, $3 billion mixed-use district anchored around artificial intelligence, asset management, and venture capital.
Hospitality Local Insider
The Economics Of Summer Restauranting
The restaurants that survive summer aren’t necessarily the best ones. They’re the ones with the deepest pockets, the leanest operations, or the most loyal local base.
Real Estate
Luxe Developments We Love: Ocean House Surfside
9317 Collins Avenue. Surfside. Nestled between Miami Beach and Bal Harbour on one of the last truly serene stretches of oceanfront in this county.
On My Mind: Yesterday I turned 47.
I don’t know what I thought 47 would look like. But I never imagined it would look like this.
It’s better than I thought. Deeper. More profound. More alive.
It’s also harder than I thought. More uncertain. More humbling.
That tension, between the beauty and the weight of it, is something I’ve stopped trying to resolve. It’s not a problem. It’s the point.
The difference between greatness and failure is inches. Between the life you dreamed of and the one that slipped away, a conversation you had or didn’t have, a bet you took or didn’t take, a moment of clarity or cowardice. Achieving anything real is about threading the needle, over and over, finding that slight edge and having the courage, and the stamina, to exploit it.
And the only way to find those edges is to persist. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. I believe that completely.
Some years bring life-altering wins. Others bring deafening failures. I’ve had both. What I’ve learned is that the journey doesn’t lead to the destination — it is the destination. The results matter. I intend to deliver them. But what I cherish more every single day are the relationships, the small moments, the look on someone’s face when they experience something I helped create. Watching each of my children fall asleep at night. Finding a creative solution to a problem I didn’t think I could solve.
The most important choice any person can make is to choose positivity. To choose happiness. To choose love. To see the good in things and assume positive intent — because whether or not the world earns it, what is life if you don’t wake up every morning reaching for joy, toward the people you love, toward the endless possibility of what’s still ahead?
I thank g-d for every moment I spend chasing my dreams, sharing my gifts, and connecting with the people I love and collaborate with.
I would not change a thing.
- Alan
BEACH BUSINESS
The New Conquisatadors: The Smartest Hotel Group You’ve Never Heard Of Just Made Its Move
Ponce de León didn’t stumble into Florida. He chose it. A calculated entry point into a new world.
Dean Group is doing the same thing.
The Dublin-based hospitality group — built by a team of former Ennismore executives who know exactly what it takes to make a boutique brand travel — just secured its second Miami property. Elliott Investment Management, Paul Singer’s $128 billion hedge fund, partnered with London-based Lifestyle Hospitality Capital Group to acquire the Mayfair House Hotel & Garden in Coconut Grove for $69.4 million. Dean Group is the operator. Miami is the jumping-off point.
Their model is simple and hard to execute: hotels rich in character, rooted in the culture of the neighborhoods they inhabit. No flags. No sameness. No corporate lobbies that could be anywhere. Every property has a point of view — and the Mayfair, whatever name it ultimately carries, will be no different.
This is Singer’s second South Florida hospitality play, following the $53 million acquisition of the Gates Hotel South Beach in 2024. The capital is serious. The operator is serious. And Coconut Grove is the right neighborhood — walkable, cultured, undersung — for a group that builds hotels for people who actually know where they are.
The States are next. Miami is just where they landed.
NORTH BEACH UPDATE: A Gourmet Grocer is finally on the Way
For years, North Beach has been a tale of two Publixes.
Bookended by the one on 71st and the one on 41st, with a collection of beloved mom-and-pops filling the gaps, the neighborhood has made it work. Nobody complained too loudly. This is Miami Beach. There are bigger problems.
But something was always missing. A grocery store that matched the neighborhood’s ambition. A place where you could buy a $14 jar of tomato sauce and feel genuinely good about it.
That place is coming.
Fresh Market is officially headed to North Beach — and yes, we know there was a Target rumor. We mourned it briefly. We moved on. Because Fresh Market is not a consolation prize. Fresh Market is an upgrade.
Here’s what North Beach is about to experience for the first time: classical music piped through the speakers while you deliberate between three varieties of artisanal sourdough. Cheese sections that require a docent. Olive oils from regions you will immediately Google. Flowers at the entrance that make you feel like a better person just for walking past them.
Brickell can have Nude. In North Beach, we want gourmet.
Magic City: The $3 Billion Bet That Refused to Die
Some visions are too big to kill. Even when the legal system tries.
Bob Zangrillo first unveiled plans for the Magic City Innovation District in Little Haiti over a decade ago. He assembled the site, secured city commission approval in 2019, then watched it stall — not because the vision was wrong, but because federal prosecutors came for him in the college admissions scandal known as Operation Varsity Blues. He was later pardoned by Trump on the final day of his first term.
Now he’s back. And the timing couldn’t be better.
Zangrillo is partnering with Plaza Equity Partners on a proposed 7.8 million-square-foot, $3 billion mixed-use district anchored around artificial intelligence, asset management, and venture capital — with 2,600-plus residential units, a hotel, and retail. Palantir, Apple, Amazon, and Gemini have all expanded in Miami-Dade. The tech migration Zangrillo predicted 14 years ago has actually happened. He wasn’t early. He was just interrupted.
The unresolved question is the human one. The project has faced opposition from residents concerned about displacing Little Haiti’s working-class community. Zangrillo’s team has committed $31 million to the Little Haiti Revitalization Trust. Whether that’s enough depends on who you ask.
What isn’t in question: the man spent years in legal limbo and came back with a $3 billion swing. Miami has a way of rewarding that kind of persistence.
HOSPITALITY LOCAL INSIDER
The Economics of Summer Restauranting: Working Hard for Nothing
Let’s talk about what nobody in the restaurant industry wants to say out loud.
Summer in Miami is a math problem with no good answer.
The rent stays the same. Food and beverage costs stay the same. Insurance stays the same. The only variable, the only lever you can actually pull, is labor. And if you cut labor, you cut the product. And if you cut the product, you lose the customers you still have.
