Robert Silk
On a recent Friday night, a crowd queued up outside the rope line on S.E. Eighth Street in Miami's Brickell neighborhood, just across the Miami River from downtown.
But what was different about this rope line was that it sat not directly in front of a nightclub but instead in front of the entrance to East Miami, a gleaming, 40-story hotel that opened in June.
True, the people weren't waiting to beat down the front desk in a desperate dash for accommodations. Instead, the mostly young, stylish crowd was primarily there in the hopes of making it upstairs to Sugar, the 40th-floor garden terrace that stays open until 3 a.m. on weekends. But if Sugar was full, they could also choose among the bar at the high-end Uruguayan steak house Quinto La Huella on the fifth floor, the adjacent pool bar or the Domain lobby bar, with its upscale, contemporary vibe that jibes with the whole of the East complex.
"I think this is the first truly urban hotel in Miami," East general manager Laurent Fraticelli had told me earlier that evening, defining an urban hotel as one that is as much apart of the local scene as it is a place for visitors.
The sleek East Miami building is part of the larger Brickell City Center, a mixed used development featuring condos, office space and an upscale, open-air mall.
In the downtown Miami area, where five hotels have opened this year, and where seven more, accounting for more than 3,100 rooms, are slated to open by the end of 2018, differentiation could be a determining factor between success and failure. After all, even as those hotels are opening, lodging demand in Miami has softened, in large part due to a decline in visitors from Brazil, where a powerful recession is raging. RevPAR in Miami was off a slight six-tenths of a percent in June according the hotel research firm STR, compared with 3.8% growth in the U.S. as a whole.
So if differentiation for Miami East means cementing a reputation as a place that's cool and a draw for locals, it's off to a great start.
A king bedroom at East Miami offers spectacular views.
While Sugar, and those rope lines, is one example of that early success, Quinto La Huella is another. Though a unified restaurant in menu, its 360 seats spread across a series of nooks and crannies, each with its own feel. Customers can break bread in the bar while live Cuban music plays. They can eat in a more traditional dining room. They can take their meals on the patio. Or they can eat in the grillroom, where Uruguayan meats are cooked over the parrilla, a large, open grill heated with red oak wood.
My meal at Quinto La Huella, which was part of a hosted stay at East Miami, included a smorgasbord of dishes; among them a chickpea flatbread called faina; grilled sweetbreads with criolla, a South American salsa; grilled octopus with potatoes; and a main course of a grass-fed ribeye steak.
I left neither hungry nor in want of better food.
But when I got up midmeal, I had to stay alert to move among the Friday night crowd: Like Sugar, Quinto La Huella was packed.
East Miami, the first U.S. hotel for Hong Kong-based Swire Properties, is actually part of the broader Brickell City Centre development, which features condominiums and office space. In November the complex's upscale pedestrian mall with more than 120 retailers is slated to open with direct access to the hotel.
I stayed at East Miami a bit too soon to take in the mall. But I had plenty of time to enjoy the Asian tapas served at Sugar, the pools that sit just outside Quinto La Huella and the broad view of Biscayne Bay and Miami from my 24th floor balcony.
The room itself was spacious and contemporary in design with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides to show off the views. It was outfitted with technology-friendly features. Central banks of buttons, rather than switches, controlled the lighting. Cellphone charging stations, outfitted for iPhone and Android, were attached to the night table. I washed under a rainfall showerhead that featured thermostat temperature control, a feature I had never seen.
Even the elevators are high-tech. Guests call the elevator and tell it which floor they are going to on a digital display in the hallway, meaning there are no buttons left to push once inside the elevator.
East Miami's appeal to adults is obvious. But I asked Fraticelli if the hotel is family-friendly, as well. His response surprised me. Not only is it family-friendly, he said, it's dog-friendly.
In the end, though, Fraticelli kept returning to East Miami's bars, restaurant and public spaces as its key to success.
"Everything we do, we do to the fullest," he said. "If I go to a place, and I feel an enormous energy, I've got to come back."