February 22, 2024

“Coast to Coast” on Fox Business with Neil Cavuto

Credit: Fox Business

February 16, 2024

NY Post’s “Inside Miami’s Booming Private Club Scene”

By Linda Laban and Katie Jackson

You’re lucky to get into Miami’s glitziest bars and restaurants these days. But the city’s real money-movers shun those oversubscribed venues. They spend their days and evenings in exclusive spaces.

“I feel the vibe of Miami now is centered on private clubs,” said Alana Oxfeld, who moved to Miami from New York in 2018. She first tested the waters, as so many do, at Soho House’s Manhattan outpost and retains her membership. But Oxfeld soon began looking for a club that would offer a beach-centered, family-friendly environment to her 3-year-old son. She landed at the Miami Beach Edition’s Beach Club, where membership gives access to a 70,000-square-foot private beach and two pools.

The Edition opened its club in 2014, four years after the mothership of modern membership-only clubs, Soho House, landed on Collins Avenue. Soho House, which now has two clubs in Miami, helped spearhead what has grown into a proliferation of private clubs in brand-name hotels and luxury residential developments across the city.

In 2020, Baia Beach Club Miami opened at the Mondrian South Beach — 1 Hotel followed, adding a revenue-boosting members-only enclave. At the Faena Hotel Miami Beach, the arts focused Faena Rose — a select salon at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach — opened in 2016.

New York’s Major Food Group recently opened ZZ’s Club, a private adjunct to its Mexican restaurant Chateau ZZ’s. It’s set in a lavish 1931-built mansion in the Miami Design District.

Miami’s latest club is at celeb dining hotspot Seaspice Brasserie & Lounge, which created the members-only Air this winter on its second floor.

Overlooking the Miami River, the bright space has the trappings of a luxury yacht complete with porthole windows and a “Yellow Submarine”-inspired sunken DJ booth. Priority boat dockage and waived dockage fees are among the many membership perks.

This spring, the Club at the Moore, located on the second floor of the landmark Moore building in Miami’s Design District, is due to open. The 20,000-square-foot club adds multiple mingling spaces including bars and lounges, all off limits to the hoi polloi.

And that’s the point: no lines and a guaranteed seat at the table.

But Miami’s oldest members-only club, the Bath Club, opened in 1926 and is all that and a lot more.
“Edition or Baia, these hotel clubs have a different purpose,” said real estate developer Don Peebles, who owns the Bath Club. “They are the hotel’s additional revenue sources. That is not our mission. Our club exists for the purpose of serving our members and they want impeccable service and a predictable environment.”

“We’re not the wild party scene — for people who want to dance on tables, we’re not for them.”
Don Peebles, Bath Club ownernone

The Spanish Colonial Revival club is once again going strong following a more than $9 million renovation. Its membership list once boasted names such as William Vanderbilt II, and even president Herbert Hoover hobnobbed here.

Peebles joined the Bath Club in 1996 and became its first African-American member. Soon after, he purchased the property. But today it’s an “exclusively inclusive” spot, Peebles said — inclusive in terms of person, but exclusively for those with enough cash and caché to get in.

Members pay “six figures to join,” he says. That’s a lot when considering it only costs $3,000 to $4,000 a year to get into most hotel clubs.

“It’s like Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle, it has that feeling to it,” Peebles adds of the iconic Manhattan spot.

Like Bemelmans, the Bath Club’s is designed to stand the test of time. Something a flash-in-the-pan beach club at the latest trendy hotel can’t hope to replicate. “One member celebrated his 13th birthday here and he’s my age, in his 60s,” Peebles said. “We’re not the wild party scene — for people who want to dance on tables, we’re not for them.”

Tired of competing with TikTokers for the hottest table in the house? We have good news: The new Delilah Miami doesn’t care how many followers you have.

“We have never done influencer trades,” Milo Frank, marketing director for the club’s owner (Hwood Group), told The Post. “We want everyone to feel comfortable in our restaurant.” That means that like its sister properties in LA and Vegas, this new Jazz Age-themed supper club located in Brickell — opened at last Art Basel — has a strict no-photos policy.

That should please Drake, one of Delilah LA’s biggest fans. The “Champagne Poetry” rapper hasn’t dropped by the Miami location yet due to his upcoming tour, “but he’s definitely looking forward to his first experience with us,” insisted Frank.

Drake and other boldface names will soon arrive via watercraft as Delilah rushes to ready its private boat slip — the only owned by a restaurant in Brickell.

While serving up usual suspects like Delilah’s “World Famous Chicken Tenders,” new entrees specific to the Miami joint will include lobster ravioli and red snapper. For a glitzy appetizer, indulge in the $230 100-layer potato, smothered in duck fat and garnished with chives and, of course, Kalluga caviar.

Expect prime people watching, pop singers debuting unreleased songs on the custom-built stage, professional athletes at the bar and live jazz.

So how hard is it to get a table? Frank doesn’t sugarcoat it. “It is pretty difficult to get a prime-time reservation,” he said.

 

Credit: NY Post

February 16, 2024

“The Exchange” on CNBC with Brian Sullivan

Don Peebles, The Peebles Corporation CEO and chairman, joins ‘The Exchange’ to discuss the challenges of valuing buildings in today’s climate, the government’s involvement in commercial real estate assessment, and more.

Credit: CNBC

February 1, 2024

Don Peebles Headlines Game Plan 2024 in Atlanta

By A.R. Shaw, Executive Editor

Several of the top business and social leaders made their way to Atlanta for the 2024 TSP Game Plan. The three-day event featured workshops designed to help business owners and entrepreneurs reach business growth.

Some notable names include Master P (Founder, P. Miller Enterprises and No Limit Records), Don Peebles (Chairman & CEO, The Peebles Corporation), Dr. Boyce Watkins (Founder, Black Business School) Arlan Hamilton (Founder, Backstage Capital).

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms served as a headliner for Mastermind Day which also featured Mastermind Day featured Clate Mask (Founder of KEAP) and Arlan Hamilton (Founder, Backstage Capital).

Lamar Tyler spoke with ADW and shared how attendees can maximize the event.

Lamar Tyler spoke with ADW and shared how attendees must implement action plans after the event.

“I want people to execute,” Tyler said. “They come and take all the notes and they feel like they are the notebook champion. What can you actually take out of here, get done and the next time they come back be at another level. We do this every six months because entrepreneurship is a roller coaster. And people leave here, they are at the top and feeling great. But life can happen and you can fall off track. So we’re here to keep you going.”

Credit: Atlanta Daily World

January 30, 2024

Fox Business “The Big Money Show”

Peebles Corporation founder and CEO Don Peebles discusses the commercial real estate market and explains why he has not endorsed a 2024 presidential candidate on 'The Big Money Show.'

Credit: Fox Business

January 23, 2024

“Mornings with Maria” on Fox Business with Maria Bartiromo

By Kristen Altus

A New York Times bestselling author and a real estate entrepreneur have started to echo similar warning signs amid "massive" issues within the commercial sector.

"It's a slow-moving train wreck," The Bear Traps Report founder Larry McDonald said on "Mornings with Maria" Tuesday. "This is why the Fed is the beast in the market, it has the Fed by a stranglehold because it's close to $2 trillion of maturities in the commercial real estate space. And then, if you look at high-yield leverage loans and investment grade bonds in the U.S. corporate market, it's another $1.9 trillion. So the Fed is going to be forced this year to cut rates dramatically."

"These buildings cannot service the debt," Peebles Corporation founder and CEO Don Peebles added on the panel. "They're worth a fraction of what the original values were when these loans were made. And you're going to see massive defaults because there's no solution in many of these instances."

Their comments are strikingly similar to Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick’s warning last week that a "generational" shift was on the horizon, painting a "very ugly" picture for America’s real estate market in 2024.

"I think $700 billion could default… The lenders are going to have to do things with them. They're going to be selling. It's going to be a generational change in real estate coming, end of 2024 and all of 2025. We will be talking about real estate being just a massive change, $700 billion to $1 trillion in defaults coming," Lutnick stressed to Maria Bartiromo at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Larry McDonald and Don Peebles discussed commercial real estate in a "Mornings with Maria" panel Tuesday. (Fox News)

The factors causing default worries is "two-fold," Peebles explained: "One, that these buildings, the contract vacancy rates have increased significantly, up to about 20% in places like New York City, for example. And then of that remaining 80%, less than half of it gets occupied. And that's because there's been a seismic shift on how people work and where they are working."

McDonald agreed with Peebles’ analysis, and both argued the "only way" to help the situation and slow down the default process is with "aggressive rate cuts" from the Federal Reserve.

"I completely agree," McDonald chimed in. "I think somewhere between like March, April, May, the probability of a soft landing in the eyes of Wall Street is going to come down dramatically. And that beast in the market, because of this emerging credit risk, all these maturities within the next two years, that eventually triggers a significant rate cut in the middle of the year."

"And remember, this is the most progressive Fed we've ever seen," McDonald continued. "It's a very left-leaning Fed. So they're going to try to help the current White House. They'll do everything possible."

Credit: FOX Business

January 4, 2024

“Last Call” on CNBC with Brian Sullivan

By Brian Sullivan

“Florida's now the second largest and strongest residential real estate market in the country,” says  @peebles_don. “Florida will continue to grow because the fundamentals are good… I think Miami’s had a big run [but] I think the opportunities are going to be the west coast.”

Credit: CNBC

December 1, 2023

“Squawk Box”

Don Peebles, The Peebles Corporation CEO and chairman, joins ‘Squawk Box’ to discuss the commercial real estate sector, potential impact on the financial sector, and more.

Credit: CNBC

November 16, 2023

“Leveraging Live Local Act With City Politicians” on Bisnow

By Matt Wasielewski

The owner of the Clevelander South Beach lost many of its hospitality workers during the height of the pandemic as patrons stopped frequenting the hotel and bar.

Credit: Bisnow 

November 7, 2023

“New York Business Owners Look Ahead” in Commercial Observer

By THE EDITORS 

There is an inner soothsayer in every decent real estate developer.

They have placed a significant bet on the future: What can rise on an empty plot of land? Who must they tap to make this vision a reality? How will this hypothetical building fit into the greater landscape? Who will buy or rent this property?

Credt: Commercial Observer

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