30 projects in pipeline:
Developer starts work on 255-room
Embassy Suites hotel in Panama City Beach
Florida Construction News staff writer
The St. Joe Company says it has
started building a new 255-room
Embassy Suites hotel in Panama
City Beach, one of 30 projects the
developer has in the pipeline for
2019. The developer is working with
Key International, Inc., on the proj-
ect in the Pier Park area, adjacent to
the area’s lifestyle center at Front
Beach Road.
Key International is a Miami-
based real estate investment and
development company. The land is
currently owned by St. Joe.
Once complete, St. Joe will man-
age the day-to-day operations of
the hotel. Plans call for the hotel to
feature 255 guest suites, a pool,
meeting space, a fitness center, an
on-site restaurant and an upper-
level, gulf-view social, catering and
event space.
“This development comes at a
10 – OCTOBER 2019 — Florida Construction News
time when demand for hotel space
in the Pier Park area is high. Visita-
tion to Panama City Beach has been
rising for the past several years with
Northwest Florida Beaches Interna-
tional Airport surpassing the one
million passenger mark for the first
time last year,” said Jorge Gonzalez,
president and CEO of St. Joe.
“With this location’s proximity to
the Pier Park lifestyle shopping cen-
ter, which offers approximately
900,000 square feet of shopping,
dining and entertainment, the Rus-
sell-Fields Pier and the Gulf of Mex-
ico we are thrilled to work with Key
International and to see construc-
tion begin,” Gonzalez said in a
statement. “We are excited to be working
with St. Joe on the development of
this new Embassy Suites in Panama
City Beach,” said Key International
co-president Diego Ardid. “We be-
lieve this property will complement
the area’s thriving tourism sector
and family-friendly nature in an un-
paralleled location.”.
This hotel joins the TownePlace
Suites adjoining Frank Brown Park
in Panama City Beach as hotel proj-
ects that St. Joe currently has under
construction. St. Joe also intends to
construct, own and operate a new
branded hotel immediately adjacent
to Northwest Florida Beaches Inter-
national Airport.
The parties anticipate the hotel
to be completed in 2021.
St. Joe says in the statement
that the new hotel is one of at least
30 new residential, commercial or
hospitality projects that it has or in-
tends to initiate in 2019.
For more information on the
company’s current project pipeline,
see the company’s Business Strat-
egy section of the 2018 Annual Re-
port on Form 10-K, Quarterly
Reports on Form 10-Q and other fil-
ings with the Securities Exchange
Commission (SEC).