The Omphoy Hotel

Last July, the mortgage holder of The Omphoy filed a foreclosure suit against Ceebraid Signal Corporation--the Schlesingers. $60 million was owed on this property. While it was being built, the Schlesingers for 4 months used their Gulfstream Hotel as a storage facility for 9 storage containers, against our city code. Instead of being slapped with a $250 a day per container fine, all Schlesinger had to pay were the administrative costs. And in typical fashion of the times, the City capitulated once again.

Adam Schlesinger came before our former Planning & Zoning Board on numerous occasions as well as the City Commission. He was crying the blues that he couldn't get financing but NO one on the P&Z Board back then, (Lisa Maxwell, former candidate for District 4, Wes Blackman, former candidate for District 3 and Phil Spinelli to name a few), asked him to prove what he said--none of them even asked. They took him at his "word." They continued to give him extension after extension and allowed the Gulfstream to lanquish. The city commission tried to reverse the P&Z's decision to give him another time extension but lost because there was no super-majority vote. Jeff Clemens, one of the worst mayors in the history of the city and Retha Lowe, voted Nay. Now we know that he did have financing and he went belly-up. It's been 6 years now and we still do not have a hotel.

Straticon, the company that originally helped us get the Lake Worth Casino building back on track by designing a plan at no cost to the city, was the contractor for The Omphoy. It had filed a lien with the County Clerk's office for $275,821. Straticon can now stand in line. Jeff Greene, former candidate for the U.S. Senate who lost that election and later sued The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald for reporting about his yacht parties, just bought the Omphoy mortgage note for an estimated $42 million.


This photo at the Omphoy Ocean Resort
is courtesy of TripAdvisor