Stephen Muss: the hotelier

Charles Flowers

The Fontainebleau has had two owners: Benjamin Novack, who built the hotel in 1954, and Stephen Muss, who bought the Fontainebleau out of bankruptcy in 1978. Novack changed the face of Miami Beach with the landmark grand hotel, although architect Morris Lapidus gets most of the public credit for it.

But it was Muss, with his funding, vision and considerable bluster that gave the Fontainebleau the most dramatic makeover of its 50-year history. The curve at Collins and 44th Street is straighter (because the street was moved 130 feet to the south). And gone is the trompe I'oeil mural that tricked the eyes of motorists heading north. Instead, there is a 36-story tower condo hotel opening later this year, the Fontainebleau II, along with a totally revamped entrance to the main hotel, which will provide guests with a 21-foot elevated view of the ocean. A third phase, the 18-story Fontainebleau III, will open in three years. Muss says he has invested $400 million in the Fontainebleau project, nearly 15 times the $28 million he paid for the original hotel.

His deals to renew the glory of old Miami Beach catapulted Muss into an exclusive and legendary league of hoteliers. He could have stopped with just the Fontainebleau Hotel but his ambitious plans will leave a larger lasting legacy for Miami-Dade's tourism industry and for its real estate landscape.

Muss calls himself a "third generation developer." His grandfather built and sold homes for as little as $3,990 in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York. His father, Alexander Muss, was one of five boys who all became real estate developers. He brought Stephen to Miami Beach in 1963, and the father-son team built five Seacoast Towers on the beach, along with Towers of Key Biscayne and Towers of Quayside. One of those Seacoast towers became the Alexander, named for Muss' father, as is a high school that Stephen Muss endowed in Haifa, Israel to honor his father. A fourth generation of Muss developers is represented by Stephen's daughter Melanie, who left a career with cosmetics giant Estee Lauder to take over operations at the Fontainebleau, and act as liaison between her father, Hilton Hotels and Turnberry Associates, the Aventura-based company building the Fontainebleau II and III.

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Fellow "Legend" Sidney Levin, who worked with Muss, says, "We converted one of the apartment buildings on Miami Beach from the Seacoast Towers north to what is now known as the Alexander. That was a project that was particularly satisfying to me. It was a difficult thing to do. It involved a lot of issues, both civic and political."

Most people don't know that Muss worked hard to push through city ordinances that eventually allowed outdoor dining on Miami Beach. The flourishing restaurant business in the city is a testament to that effort, which was done in spite of the fact that Muss did not own any property that would directly benefit from lifting the ban on outdoor dining. "Nonetheless, it was his pressures and his activities that made so many changes for the better on Miami Beach," Levin says. "I don't think there is anybody that deserves more credit for the success of Miami Beach, and is misunderstood more.... I found him to be an extraordinary man. I learned a lot from him. He's a visionary."

Muss also took a stab at development in Brooklyn during the late 1980s when he launched an unsuccessful project called Brighton By the Sea. He later sold the 14-acre property to his cousin, Joshua Muss.

Back in South Florida, Muss had better luck when he helped create the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau and helped shepherd through a three percent tax on visitors to fund its county-wide tourism marketing activities.

"The hotel people didn't like me, because hotel guests had to spend more money," Muss says. "This tax through the years has made more money than we ever contemplated."

He credits the visitor tax with allowing the Miami Beach Convention Center to expand from 250,000 square feet to one million. It expanded the Coconut Grove Convention Center and funded the building of tennis stadiums on Key Biscayne, he says. Moreover, the tax built the Miami Arena and later the American Airlines arena, as well as the Homestead Municipal Raceway. Today it is a major contributor to the funding of the Miami Performing Arts Center.

Muss is also proud of his work chairing the Dade County Sports Authority, which selected a site for a stadium that might have accommodated the four major professional sports all in what is now Miami-Dade. In a disappointing blow to him, the deal was scuttled when The Miami Herald, and other critics, accused Muss of having conflicts of interest. Later, former Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie, "to spite the county over the loss of the Orange Bowl," says Muss, built his football stadium along the Dade-Broward line "and that was the end of that." Muss' plan would have created one facility for $600 million instead of more than four at the cost of $2 billion, he says.

His quixotic roles continued when he advocated casino gambling, a proposition that has failed miserably whenever it has made it to the ballot in Florida.

The results of the three-cent tax and his work on Fontainebleau projects could erase any bitter aftertaste from those defeats and it may yet re-start what Muss calls "the engine" of Miami Beach. On a tour he shows some of the construction and renovation of the old hotel. Key parts of the "renovation" involved getting back to the design architect Morris Lapidus originally created--saving the huge chandeliers, stairways, and bowtie-patterned tile floors that were part of Lapidus' fashion statement. The original facade of the Sorrento, a small, Art Deco-style hotel originally owned by Novack, will be incorporated into the new complex. One later addition that will stay in the lounge is the circular mural painted by the late Carlos Alfonzo, a Cuban-American artist who came to Miami during the 1980 Mariel boatlift.

As he pauses off the lobby, next to a model of the Fontainebleau II and III, Muss, gray-haired and wearing black loafers without socks, turns up the pitch.

"This will be one of the most exciting properties in the country," he says. "We are building a world-class spa, redesigning and rebuilding the entire shopping arcade. We'll have a major internationally known restaurant, the Fontainebleau Ocean Club directly on the ocean, and because of the Cookie's World children's theme park that we've built; we cater to all segments of the market--families, conventions and social guests from all over the world."

Muss expresses little worry about his competition, including new five-diamond properties.

"It's wonderful to see all these hotels built up on Brickell Avenue in downtown Miami because that will make the entire destination stronger." Muss continues. "And it's wonderful to see all the new hotels on Miami Beach--Loew's, Ritz-Carlton, Marriott, Wyndham ... one of my biggest disappointments was that we were here all alone for a long time (as the only major chain hotel on the beach).

"The Fontainebleau, the Eden Roc, the Wyndham and the forthcoming Canyon Ranch are the engine of Miami Beach, and South Beach is the sizzle."

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL MCELROY

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