The Wyndham Grand Clearwater Beach, at 750,000 square feet the largest development ever built on that beach, opened its doors in January. It’s also where families can get the biggest bang for their buck.”īuoyed by record tourism in the past two years, developers have built a number of new hotels along Clearwater Beach, one after the other, with even more projects on the horizon. “The media has realized what a beautiful beach it is. “People have finally woken up,” Lele says.
This year, it fell a couple of notches, but still ranks high at number four. In 2016, TripAdvisor named Clearwater Beach the No. They wanted it to be their own secret.”īut in recent years, developers and tourists have flocked to the beaches of Pinellas County after media outlets consistently rank the beaches high among the best in the world. “I’d have people come up to me and say, ‘Please don’t tell anyone about this place.’ They didn’t want it to be another Miami. “But it was like a hidden secret,” Lele says. Petersburg, has always been a draw for family vacations. Something like this will improve the quality of life and bring things to the next level here.”Ĭlearwater Beach, with its amazing white sand, two nearby airports and proximity to Tampa and St. Instead, he says, it’s his gift to Clearwater Beach. One-, two- and three-bedroom residences are available, ranging from $550,000 to $1.3 million.Īs Lele eyes retirement, he doesn’t consider the JW Marriott project his swan song. “That was without any advertising, without any real push,” he says. We’re looking to create a product that is unique and different for the marketplace.”īuyers snatched up 11 of the 36 furnished, upscale residences within two weeks of their going on the market. “There’s nothing like it in a 100-mile radius. The $120 million-project will include two signature restaurants, two signature bars, a Zen garden, a pool and 20,000 square feet of open decking and terraces. He’ll also dedicate four floors of the hotel tower to the first JW Marriott Residences ever to be built in the United States. Gulfview Blvd., at the end of this year to build a 166-room JW Marriott hotel. Lele will raze the DreamView, located at 691 S. Now, as Clearwater Beach enjoys a hotel and tourism boom, the entrepreneur’s Enchantment LLC will bring a much-lauded piece of the puzzle to the locale - a five-star hotel, the first in the Tampa Bay area. So he invested in the area, developing several condo towers and building the DreamView Resort on the beach. Uday Lele saw the potential of Clearwater Beach to become a major Florida destination more than two decades ago, when he first moved to the region.