Miami on the Make

In Miami real-estate offices it seemed like old times, almost like 1925 Florida boom times. Phones rang, telegrams poured in, buyers haggled over prices. Deals were closed, and at fancy prices, compared even to a year ago. Piling up fat commissions, brokers happily pondered the new Florida real-estate boom.

Most deals were for small and medium-sized hotels and apartment houses. Even so, prices ran up as high as $300,000, with many owners collecting more than the original construction costs. Because the Army prohibits civilians from taking pictures of its military installations, some hotels still leased to the Army are being sold sight unseen to out-of-town buyers.

Biggest deal so far this season came when J. Myer Schine acquired the swanky, 300-room Roney Plaza Hotel, 18 years old, from Papal Marquis George MacDonald. The price: $1,601,000. Terms: cash. The deal was interesting: when the famed Roney Plaza opened in 1926, J. Myer Schine was strictly nobody. In 1918 he opened his first movie theater modestly in Gloversville, N.Y. It was an old roller-skating rink which he converted with a borrowed $1,500. Last week Schine, now owner of a chain of some 150 theaters in New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Delaware and Maryland, lolled in Miami. When asked what he did up north, he retorted, "I sit and watch snowflakes slide down windowpanes. What else is there to do in the North?" But he hinted that he would not be so idle in Florida. After the war he plans to build an addition to the Roney Plaza, and double its capacity.

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