• • •
Had Guest been the top bidder in his attempt to buy the Boca
Raton Hotel in 1987 he probably would have never set foot in
the Vinoy or St. Petersburg. But his was the second highest bid
on that 1926 pink hotel. He had forged a friendship with the
Boca hotel’s manager, however, during the process. It was
that manager who called him months later to suggest he take a
look at the Vinoy.
“I walked through the hotel and saw the potential and said,
‘Let’s do it.’ Life is serendipitous in that you
have no idea what you might find of interest,” Guest said.
But few bankers or hotel management companies shared his vision
of a grand hotel along a quaint waterfront with shops and restaurants.
Instead they saw a baseball stadium without a team, a downtown
without a retail hub. Developer Bay Plaza had razed several buildings
to make way for new construction, but that was at a standstill.
“We found it very, very difficult raising money because
you took somebody through downtown and it looked like an empty
parking lot. Instead of at least being old buildings there, they
were all taken down,” Guest recounted.
Add to that a few of Johnny Carson’s punch lines. “Instead
of newlyweds, St. Petersburg is home to the nearly dead,”
the beloved comedian cackled and called the city “God’s
waiting room.”
“I would talk to a banker in some other part of the country
and say the population has changed and it’s gotten much
younger and there’s new technology in the area and all they
remembered were the green benches and jokes,” Guest bemoaned.
He tried to sell the plan of local members joining the hotel
as a club. That would augment the tourist business, but nobody
was familiar with a hotel-club concept. Management companies
also balked at the thought of running a luxury resort with rooms
and bathrooms the size of those built in 1925.
But for all the doubts, Guest thought the Vinoy was worth the
struggle.
“It was a beautiful building that the city loved. Anybody
I talked to told me about wonderful times there for their birthday
or their wedding or any social event. That gave me a glimmer
of hope that the community was so invested in it,” he said.
So Guest scrapped his initial designs and started over, making
every two rooms into one and adding a tower of 100 new rooms.
Then Ritz-Carlton announced it had plans to build a luxury hotel
in Naples.
 
Long
shot of the Vinoy lobby
The Vinoy front desk
[modules.marriott.com
photos]
“This gave us a breath of air to live on a little longer,”
Guest said. “Up to that point everything was on the east
coast of Florida. This allowed us to use the Ritz-Carlton and
the rates they were going to charge as an example.”
J.P. Morgan was Guest’s adviser and broker in securing lending.
Guest was given a list of 100 banks the broker would approach.
Each day he marked a few more banks off the list until only two
were left: Barclays and Credit Lyonnais.
“One was French and one was English. We convinced them they
should work together on this,” Guest recalled.
But considering the hotel ended up in foreclosure, perhaps the
other 98 banks were right.
Still, Guest is proud of his role in the rebirth of downtown.
“Somebody wrote a book about optimists, and I think I’m
in that category. I believed St. Pete could be this beautiful
city, which it is now, and that the hotel would be the heart
of it and people locally would join and other people would come
from other parts of the world to visit.”
"Red Cloud Indian Arts" at 208 Beach Drive NE opened
in 1988, when the Vinoy was “just a birdhouse,” owner
Harriet Rambeaux said.
“The downtown area had only a couple of restaurants and
nothing really at night. The Vinoy brought the whole city alive,”
she said. “It helped everybody down here, and it also attracted
people to open up businesses. It really was the renaissance of
downtown.”
See also:
 What’s
in a name Aymer Vinoy Laughner: Built downtown palace ....(10/1990)
From ritzy to ratty and back again, The Vinoy
has come full circle ......(7/1992)
The story continues: See 'Vinoy verdict: exceptionally
elegant' story ...(8/1992)
The Vinoy celebrates the 10-year anniversary
of its grand reopening ..(8/2002)
Vinoy House was once Aymer Vinoy Laughner’s
winter home ..............(5/2014)
The Vinoy Legacy: The $93 million restoration
and (more history) ....(11/2014)
The Vinoy originally opened 90 years ago, a
step back (retrospect) ......(7/2015)
The Vinoy will be getting a facelift: breaks
ground on renovations .......(5/2016)
Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort & Golf
Club - new owner ....(7/2017)
Paul’s Landing at the Vinoy is the newest restaurant to open ................(3/2018)
The old Vinoy, the battle to save it and the
power of legacy ...................(6/2018)
More stories and chronological timeline of
Vinoy (more history 2) .......(9/2019)
St. Petersburg’s Vinoy hotel planning remodel for 2022 .........................(9/2021)
More pictures of The Vinoy
Go Back to The Vinoy history timeline
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