TradeWinds Island Resorts Expansion

The TradeWinds expansion remakes the 25-acre beachfront resort at 5500 Gulf Boulevard, home of the Island Grand and RumFish Beach Resorts, which already holds 967 rooms and villas, a 12-story tower with 629 hotel keys set to finish in 2043.

South Florida-based 1754 Properties, the ownership group behind TradeWinds, plans three new hotel towers of 11 and 12 stories, rising to about 116 feet, that together add 629 rooms, roughly 68,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, nearly 25,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space, and structured parking for more than 2,100 cars. The towers replace a dated surface parking lot and older hotel buildings. Designed by Texas-based Nunzio Marc DeSantis Architects with Perry-Becker Landscape Architects, the plan includes a two-story beachfront restaurant, a beach bar with retractable glass walls and ceiling, two amenity decks with pools and restaurants, a pedestrian promenade wrapping the resort, three new public beach access points, dune restoration, and a 4,800-square-foot rooftop viewing deck open to the public atop the first-phase tower. The project targets LEED Silver with green roofs and an upgraded stormwater system, and an internal access road moves garage traffic off Gulf Boulevard.