Rising rates, more visitors spurs hotel construction boom | www.mypalmbeachpost.com

Palm Beach County has 2000 less hotel rooms than it had in the year 2000. Now, more than 1000 rooms are under-construction and another 800 rooms are in the development review process. This is to replace the supply that was lost during the hurricanes, conversions to condos on Singer Island and the loss of our own historic Gulfstream from being out of operation. The market is responding so you would think that Lake Worth would show up on someone's map as the perfect place for a new hotel, or two, or three...

Click title for link to a revealing article. This is where Lake Worth gets mentioned.

Places like Singer Island lost hundreds of rooms in the conversion and more after the hurricanes hit in 2004 and 2005. Only one hotel, the Palm Beach Marriott Singer Island, has opened since 1990, and the number of rooms is down from more than 2,000 to fewer than 700. Lake Worth’s small hotels also were devastated by hurricanes and the recession. The city has seen no new hotels built since 1990 and has lost nearly half of its rooms.

They must be referring to the mothballed Gulfstream and the Hummingbird. The later had community bathrooms. One former Commissioner, you know the one if you think about it real hard, referred to the Hummingbird as Lake Worth's European-style hostel. This probably to reflect the fact that it was served by community restrooms.

Here is some more from the article:

“I like to develop hotels in areas that I myself like to visit,” Finvarb Group Principal Ronny Finvarb, developer of the Abacoa Courtyard by Marriott that has been under construction for the past year, said in an email.
He’s not the only one visiting.
Palm Beach County has been steadily increasing in visitors — up to 5.5 million in 2012. Hoteliers set records last year for tourism tax collections, known as bed taxes, and Florida has brought in an ever higher number of visitors for the past three years with goals to reach 100 million in the next year or two.
Developers want to build more hotels because occupancy and rates are climbing. Part of that increase is the 2,000 fewer rooms that it had a decade ago.

The Marriot at Abacoa is being built near the Roger Dean Stadium, Spring baseball home of the Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals. Hmmmm...