Gulfstream Front and Center

The Gulfstream Hotel at 1 Lake Avenue in Lake Worth, with the cleared lot next to it on the corner of Lakeside Drive where someone seems to want very, very much to build another building to add another 100 rooms.

The Gulfstream Hotel was front and center at Tuesday night's city commission meeting with city staff recommending a special "hotel district" be created to allow for perhaps very high heights around the Intracoastal waterway in Lake Worth.

"It's going to take some height for someone to put together an economically viable project," William Waters, the city's development director, told the mayor and commissioners in reference to the Gulfstream.

The Gulfstream Hotel has 106 rooms. It is on the market for $9 million, according to local blogger Lynn Anderson.

The problem seems quite simply not that one can't make money with "only" 106 hotel rooms, but that one can't make money with "only" 106 rooms after having paid $9 million for the hotel!

It's overpriced.

As of Jan. 1, 2011 it was assessed at $2.5 million. The county may have given it a low assessment because it was closed, and not making money. But still. It's not worth $9 million. In 2003 it sold for $6 million. Considering property values have gotten knocked back about ten years, this is probably what it's worth now.

The establishment of a hotel district -- with a much higher height limit than for the rest of the downtown area -- would allow a future (prospective?) owner of the Gulfstream Hotel to follow through with the previous owner's grand plan to build another tall tower in the empty lot on the corner of Lake Avenue and South Lakeside Drive in order to add 100 guest rooms.

My observation has been that large new buildings tacked onto the side of lovely historic buildings are really never a good idea. The value and beauty of the original structure is degraded, and can never be revived.