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 Alan
Lieberman
The Inn Man
When you’re Alan Lieberman, and your ever-expanding collection of hipster hotels continually
grabs headlines for hosting the
South Beach elite, you’ve got the city by the balls.
It was 1997 when, in his 50s, the Realtor decided to buy the small
Collins Avenue
hotel called the Shelley, and the purchase set off a wave of
boutique hotel acquisitions that became the infamously chic South
Beach Group, which now owns the Chesterfield, the Chelsea, the
Whitelaw, the Mercury Resort, the Catalina and the Metropole Hotel
Apartments.
Lieberman’s claim to fame is a simple, yet insanely successful one.
The real estate mogul tapped into the sins and fantasies that make
South Beach great. He added DJs in the lobbies, celebrity-littered
dance floors and a blind eye to goings-on of the Scarface
wannabes, pimps, fledgling models and cocaine cowboys who flock to
clubland in droves to burn money.
He filled his hotels with young
South Florida locals who live way out of drunk driving range,
weekend warriors looking for evenings of glitz and glam, and, in
the process, Lieberman forever changed the character of South
Beach. During Art Basel each year, the
Catalina
Hotel is turned into 150-room art fair where dealers rent space to
show their works.
His wife, Diane, is another real estate mogul who runs South Beach
Investment Realty, and the duo recently served each as honorary
chair and sponsor of Pop 007, the
Museum
of Contemporary Art’s February James Bond-themed benefit, which
hosted 800 art lovers and socialites and raised more than $300,000
to fund MOCA art acquisitions.
His son, Nathan, also followed in the family business, no doubt
taking lessons from a dad who has dominated the South Beach
boutique hotel market. And a brilliant endeavor it was because,
even as the real estate market crumbles and the economy worsens,
people inevitably still flock to South Beach, and into the
Lieberman empire.
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