Situated on a highly prized piece of Downtown ground, the property currently contains 165,000 sf feet of office space, a 297-room Ramada-brand hotel and about 142 leased apartments.

Following renovation work, however, the company will remarket the property as the Travel and Trade Center of the Americas, which will contain a mixture of extended-stay and transient lodging, travel and trade show facilities and permanent and temporary office space.

As part of the remarking effort, the company announced last week plans to convert the Dupont Plaza Apartments into a 142-room, extended-stay Residence Inn managed by Marriott.

"Extended stay has been the hot new market," Sheldon Greene, a Miami-based hotel industry consultant, tells GlobeSt.com "That type of property doesn't exist Downtown or the nearby Brickell Avenue area. It would seem ideal that you take these rental apartments and make them extended-stay, because there might be a market for them."

Because of Miami's reputation as a tourism and international trade Mecca, Lazar says it makes sense to offer a mixture of extended-stay and transient lodging for travelers doing business at the Travel and Trade Center.

"The idea is to establish a one-stop, wholesale and retail shopping site for the travel and trade industry," Lazar says. "As far as we know this has never been done before. We've had a lot of good response about the concept."

In the meantime, occupancy is dwindling fast in the DuPont Plaza as the prior owner prepared for redevelopment, and Lionstone is now executing it. Office occupancy, for instance, is estimated at about 25%.

"We haven't signed anyone to a lease yet," Lazar says. "But there's been a lot of interest expressed."

All of this is just the start for Lionstone, Lazar says, a family-owned company controlled by Alfredo Lowenstein. It was his late-father who first acquired the DiLido and Seville hotels in the late 1970s. Besides Lowenstein and Lazar, Diego Lowenstein, vice president and chief operating officer, serve as the company's principal executives.

The company also owns the Sheraton Curacao Resort and the Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort and the Bushiri Beach Resort in Aruba.

"We're always looking for additional properties, as long as they meet our parameters," Lazar says. "We generally like underutilized properties ripe for redevelopment, generally beachfront, but definitely waterfront. Depending on each deal, we use bank financing. But we also provide a significant amount of our own capital."