After years of development and discussion, construction on the Space Coast’s first Margaritaville destination is set to begin on Monday.

Equipment for the construction of the $100 million Compass Landing by Margaritaville on U.S. 1 in Melbourne started staging on Friday in anticipation of the work starting.


What You Need To Know

  • The hotel will consist of 146 rooms amid seven stories.

  • There will also be a 221-slip marina.

  • Low-impact development techniques are being used in the development to mitigate the impact on the Indian River Lagoon.

“This initially was the abandoned marina. So, with all the easement issues and the permitting process with numerous agencies, the design on this is really putting Melbourne on the map,” said Melbourne City Mayor Paul Alfrey on Friday. “It’s gonna be very exciting to see all these plans come together.”

Both he and developer, Harry Mirpuri, noted that this will be a unique addition to the collection of Margaritaville resorts. 

“There’ll be some individual features within the rooms and the resort itself that tie into the local beach, Brevard and Space Coast area that kind of help promote that connection between the localness of the area to the national exposure of the brand,” Mirpuri said.

Mirpuri Real Estate Holdings, LLC is spearheading the development of the resort, which features a 146-room, seven story hotel along with a 221-boat slip marina. There will also be a four-story parking garage, a two-story restaurant.

“Upstairs will be more of a poly-casual dining environment and downstairs will be more of a beach bar, relaxed, casual environment,” Mirpuri said.

He noted that supply chain issues and COVID delays have slowed the process, but they have all their permits and permissions to move forward with construction. They anticipate opening in either late 2024 or early 2025.

Connecting this resort to parts of U.S. 1 will be additional boardwalk spaces that the City of Melbourne is working on. Alfrey said increasing river access was one of their priorities.

“We’re working on grants to extend a large boardwalk so our residents can come in and use it because it is public access and use the parking garage and actually go for a nice stroll in the evening,” Alfrey said.

“When you look at the project overall, it’s a lot of additions. The parking, the walkability, the chance to get out with the family,” Alfrey said.

One of the other big components of the project was working with stakeholders to ensure that it didn’t further stress the negative impacts that the Indian River Lagoon has dealt with over the last several years.

Mirpuri said they are implementing a number of low-impact development elements to keep storm water from running off into the river and rather, keep it on property.

“We have concrete tanks that are buried under a parking structure and the entire site as well. Kimley-Horn is our civil engineers and they spent a lot of time and effort to make sure that there is no impact,” Mirpuri said. “And more importantly, everything is approved by all the agencies involved as well.” 

He added that they will use materials called pervious pavers, which help prevent storm water runoff in addition to incorporating low-impact, drip line irrigation.

Mirpuri said they also did a lot of work to mitigate future sea level rise and storm surge impact in the coming decades. 

“We looked at the current change in water rise and we planned out to 2040. In addition to that, we’re shoring up the entire sea wall with the riprap system,” Mirpuri said. “So, we’re extremely confident that this will be designed not only to the current standards, but way beyond that. We kind of look at it from the next 25 years and looking backward at the last 100 years.”