Rehabilitating the Peter Miller Hotel has not been easy.
Inside the 1936 Art Deco building in South Beach, 163 concrete beams that ran across the ceilings and held up the structure had deteriorated and badly needed replacement. It was work that the developer, Sandor Scher, hadn’t anticipated when he originally proposed upgrading the building, which sits in a local historic district that protects it against total demolition.
“Going through and surgically repairing a structure is a tremendous amount of work,” said Scher, who has done other rehabs where entire foundations have needed replacing and, in one case, an old pool that had been filled in with concrete was discovered under grass. “If it’s a large project, it can take tens of millions of dollars.”
