The Miami News from Miami, Florida • 17

Miami Daily News Editorials i VIEWS OF THE NEWS Bill Boggs Ralph McGill Walter Locke Roberts. Allen SECTION SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 1954 Mot Boom Sets Area DO a New Tren urism in Elsewhere in country growth is called death knell of hotel business, but that is not so here, experts say. In Sunny Isles a new city of these accommodations has sprung up with top appeal to motoring tourist who didn't stay along beach before. -Jiujujiin 1 1 111 1 I i I 1 By JANE WOOD Miami Daily Ntws Staff Writtr Looking south on Collins Avenue at 163rd Street, it's motels all the way. This is area of greatest growth.

Photo at right shows same group seen from ocean side, with bathing facilities to match luxury hotels. Photos by Mike Freeman sTrr-- Oyr iww (TTT ocean front hotels charged only $25 to $35 a day, he says. What does it cost to build a motel? Kent Parker, executive secretary of the Greater Miami Beach Motel Association, says it costs close to $10,000 a unit for a luxury motel. Brandes approximates it at from $5,000 to $10,000 a unit. Rivkind says it costs $5,000 a unit to build a motel, and $10,000 to build a hotel.

What other economic advantages, after the initial cost, does the motel owner have? Maintenance is easier and cheaper. Taxes are lower in Sunn Isles than on Miami Beach. One-third of the space in a hotel may be wasted in corridors, elevator shafts, lounges. A much greater percentage of the motel space goes into rent-producing rooms. vVhat about future building, both of motels and hotels, along the ocean front? Ocean front property within the city limits of Miami Beach is simply too expensive to build motels on because they do not pile room upon room the way a hotel does.

Since 1946, the fabulous hotel row in the 60's has built up solidly. There is no vacant lot to put another hotel in the concrete wall along the water. Future inn-building within the city will have to be in the blocks from the 40's north that are now zoned for estate residences. If this zoning is ever changed, or when it is changed, Rivkind says he feels sure that big hotels will fill it up, though not at the rate of building that has gone on since the war. THREE TOWERING HOTELS stand tall in the open ocean front of Surfside, just north of the Mi- jaRswssMsr vjS mas 1 People who use motels usually travel in cars and sometimes have children with them who find greater informality to their liking.

These pooplo are responsible for great growth of motels. ARE YOU OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THE tourist cabins of the 1920's little wood huts along the highways, few and far between? If you are, you ought to go over to Sunny Isles and see the descendants of those cabins on motel row. Ride along the three-mile stretch from Haulover Beach to Golden Beach, and you'll know you've lived a long time. The off-spring of the cabin is the luxury resort motel, and 49 of them have gone up along the north end of Collins avenue since 1952. Another 50 are in blue-print stage.

This season, a new motel opened every two weeks. They offer the comfort and convenience that the top luxury resort hotels offer. Are the just- hotels that stretch out, instead 0f up horizontal, instead of vertical? Is the mttel the death sentence of the hotel? Does it tap an entirely new source of vacationing dollars in this area? Does it mirror the wayfaring stranger, and with him our whole society today, in a new way? For answers to these questions, take a close look at Dade's finest motel row. The 49 members of the Greater Miami Beach Motel Association there havt built 3,500 units (rooms) in the last two years. There was little on the low dune but lea-wheat and the Sunny Isles Casino before that.

None of the structures are over three storiei high, for two reasons. The Dade building code require much more expensive construction when a building gets taller than that, and the motel seems to lose some of its magic attraction for travellers when it adds even a second story. Men in the business say the one-story motel makes the most money for the investment, because they stay full. The second stories stay half full. Most of these new inns have swimming pools, air-conditioning, restaurant or coffee shop, and cocktail lounge.

Many advertise TV. Most have telephones In their rooms. Roofs tilt rakishly in the modern mariner. The architecture is imaginative and exuberant. Many have the air of the luxury club.

But in all of them you can park your car near your room and carry your bags in yourself. You don't have to tip a doorman to have it parked three blocks away, and you don't have to tip a bell-boy to carry your bag. You can save quite a bit on normal hotel tips that way. You havt the famous Miami Beach ocean at your door, ai well at your car. You can njoy all the luxuries in shorts and shirt sleeves.

Even the comparatively simple demands in the way of dress, coats and ties made by the custom of the hotels in this area are rot made in the motels. One motel owner was surprised one recent evening to find a man sitting on the terrace in pajamas, but nobody objected. YOU CAN GET a hotel room or an apartment room with kitchenette in most of these new motels. You can do your own cooking, or lome of it. Your children are welcmed.

What are the rates? Floyd Brandes, one of these motel owners, says at the peak of the. season the rates in Sunny Isles ran from a minimum of $10 a day to a maximum of $30 a day, accommodating two, for a room without kitchenette. The wide spread in price depends on accommodations and on which side of the road the motel is on. Those on the ocean charge more, of course. Compare these charges with those of the luxury oceanside resort hotels of Miami Beach.

Samuel Rivkind, executive secretary of the Miami Beach Hotel Association says that the highest hotel rates on Miami Beach ranged from $35 to $45 a day for est person. However, some the finest first class rented houses, 2 per cent in "other lodgings." That "other" means anything from boats to park benches. This is the picture, then. How can it be interpreted? The motel men and the hotel men ar in remarkable agreement on most aspects of the picture. They have but one fierce little feud going at the moment.

The-Miami Beach Hotel Association's Rivkind says, "It is unscrupulous and unethical for the motels at Sunny Isles to advertise themselves as being on Miami Beach. They are not within the city limits and they are taking advantage of our magic name and our tremendous expenditure for advertising. They leave out the word 'Greater' every chance they get and just call themselves Miami Beach motels. The misleading advertising is the only thing we object to about Sunny Isles motels." The Greater Miami Beach Motel Association's secretary, Kent Parker at Sunny Isles says, "Leave out the 'Greater'. Miami Beach is our post office and we have a perfect right to use the name." OUTSIDE of this feud, they are in fairly close agreement in interpreting the overall picture.

Says Rivkind, "The motel row at Sunny Isles is certainly the finest thing of its kind in the world. Up there they are catering to a public that wants informality, cheaper rates, easy access to the car, no tipping. The motel room's original cost is half that of the hotel room, their maintenance and operation cost is a fraction. That means the motels will continue to spring up pretty fast. "Fifty-five per cent of the tourists coming to Miami Beach, a survey in 1953 showed, Came by auto, and a substantial part of that traffic wants motels.

Another big factor in the appeal of this kind of inn is the family with children. Half the resort motels have kitchenette units. For both these reasons they are taking business from apartments." "We have 28,000 hotel rooms in Miami Beach, and 4,000 to 5,000 motel rooms in the area around us. I certainly don't think they will put hotels out of business, though they are indeed cutting in on the vacationing motorists. The hotels are still getting most of the airline visitors.

"But a motel doesn't give what the luxury resort hotel gives entertainment, fine dining rooms, quiet, service, and a certain formality of living. I seriously doubt that the top resort hotels of Miami Beach have lost any business to the resort motels. The smaller hotels en the lines of traffic flow have solved the problem by changing their title to motel." Mr. Brandes agrees in considerable part "The resort motel is attracting an entirely different type of tourist, a winter visitor that never stopped by our ocean before. He is the travelling motorist who planned to spend most of his vacation on the road.

I don't believe we've taken much business from the big resort hotel." Mr. Parker, who has had considerable motel experience in other parts of the nation, says, "In the rest of the country the motel has already meant the death sentence of the hotel. In Texas they call them motor courts. In Canada and New England they use the odious word cabins for the magnificent new motels they are building. But all over, under any name, the motel has slowed hotel building to a stand-still.

"However, I don't think the resort motel of motel row on the beach will seriously hurt the large, properly managed resort hotel here. It is a matter of different atmospheres. THESE ARE the verdicts, then of three meuj close to the new phenomenon. They indicate they have on hand a full-blown revolution in the hotel trade, a new style of resort life. But they indicate that the revolution will not be a painful redivision of old business, but a bringing in of new business to the inns beside the sea.

Weopk aT. v. vva, a i i ie mmmmJl 1 i i I rlfMrt ml i if" hathuwmmm. Not having to dress up, as is the case in the better hotels, finds favor with segment of th tourist trade. Many of these people did not think of stopping at places fronting beach before.

Time exposure of fabulous hotel row, Miami Beach. Top hotels aren't believed hurt by motel competition. ami Beach city limits. There is room for a lot of inns of soma sort there. After Baker's Haulover bridge comes the county park, Haulover Beach, then the three mile stretch of Sunny Isles.

There is room for motel row there to triple. A thriving shopping center along Sunny Isles road is spreading down Collins Ave. to take care of the needs of the traveller. It is a cartoon of Lincoln road, but doing a bustling business. The ocean front of Golden Beach is zoned for residential estates.

Beyond that, Broward County, Seminole Beach, Hallandale Beach, Hollywood Beach, are all breaking out with luxury motels, but there is room or tremendous expansion there. How long do visitors stay in motels, in contrast with other kinds of rented roofs in the area? Figures from the University of Miami Bureau of Business and Economic Research help here. The survey took a cross-section of all visitors to Dade county. They are significant in showing that the motels have the shortest length of stay. Median stays in various typo of lodgings where visitors stayed were: motels, 5 days; hotels, 10 days; apartments, 14 days; and houses 17 days.

This same survey showed the cross-section of tourists slept as follows: 25 per cent in hotels; 26 per cent in motels; 28 per cent with friends and relatives; 12 per cent in apartments, 7 per cent in u. JW.UW1IMM.J WWPj I Ml mm .11 I v- Cv 2p X. i- (t Cj H-ti tifAfi-H-t' ii iii mi mi inmmn i iIM Tiil "Ii 1 Looking north on Collins Avenue along "Motel Row" in Sunny Isles. How brisk business is can bo seen by parked csi. Recent survey snowed 26 per of visitors hero stayed in metals..