Miami Heat

FANFAIR

JONATHAN MORR JUMP-STARTS THE SOUTH BEACH RE-REVIVAL

It may be a little hard to believe that Miami Beach, that great shining example of American architectural and cultural renovation, needs a revivifying tonic, especially one in the form of a new boutique hotel wrought out of a cool building from the 30s. But that is just the contention of Jonathan Morr, in whose view Miami Beach has lost touch with the young, free-living hedonists who made it a hot spot, so slavishly does the place now cater to a more lucrative set: the young-as-you-feel, free-spending hedonists.

He should know, having developed and opened the Blue Door restaurant at the Delano Hotel, still the local shrine to the $700-a-night stay. So with Townhouse, Morr is making amends. His 67-room, five-story hotel may be as relentlessly hip as any in Ian Schrager’s empire, simply and cleanly designed by India Mahdavi with common areas galore (and even the stray piece of exercise equipment) in the hallways to encourage a groovy communal spirit, and an outpost of Morr’s BondSt restaurant in the basement. Morr sidestepped the site’s pool-lessness in a way which can only be described as zany: a brace of water beds on a roof-deck gathered around a water-tower fountain. Rooms start at $99, and, moreover, he has quashed those nasty mini-bar costs: rooms come with an empty icebox to be filled by you. “It cost more just to put refrigerators in, because the mini-bar people do it as a concession,” says the 37-year-old restaurateur, who had no thought of becoming a hotelier until he bicycled past the empty building one day. “But it’s better if you can just put what * you want in there. What, I’m going to charge you $4 for a Coke?” Surely he won’t last as a hotelier,

DAVID COLMAN

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