Fall from grandeur: Recession, foreclosure shutter Grand Bay
Pigeons live in the barren penthouse nightclub of the former Grand Bay, South Florida’s last five-star hotel.
A vagrant recently went to the bathroom in the vacant lobby, where black graffiti colors the walls. The dining room hints of smoke, the remnant of a campfire built on the polished cherry floors.
No local hotel has suffered as steep a fall as Coconut Grove’s Grand Bay, which closed two years ago for a $20 million renovation and never reopened.
Now the subject of a protracted foreclosure fight, the boarded-up hotel offers no hint — inside or out — that it once epitomized the lavish and libertine Miami of the 1980s.