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Business and Leisure
Biltmore Lives On
 Many famous guests have stayed at the 1897-vintage resort, including Babe Ruth, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. |
The Belleview Biltmore Resort near Clearwater marks its 110th birthday this year with good news. Legg Mason Real Estate Investors, a billion-dollar real estate investment trust, plans to buy and upgrade the hotel, which a previous developer planned to tear down a few years ago to make way for condos.
The resort is operated by Trust Hotels & Resorts, which has spent $12 million in the past five years upgrading the building, says Richard Wilhelm, president and CEO of the operating company as well as Belleview Biltmore Resort Ltd.
At almost 1 million square feet, the resort is the largest continuously operating wooden structure in the world and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It has 244 rooms, many with 16-foot ceilings, marble baths and wooden floors. Prices range from $89 a night for a Victorian room to $349 for a sun parlor room, $1,500 for one of three governor's suites and $2,500 for the 3,000-sq.-ft. presidential suite.
 Biltmore's spa |
The resort has another pool, restaurant, locker rooms and cabanas on Sand Key.
The hotel has 32,000 square feet of meeting and catering space, including the starry-ceiling Starlight Ballroom, where Thomas Edison used to show movies on a projector, and the Tiffany Ballroom, with its vaulted ceiling and lighted Tiffany glass walls.
The Belleview Biltmore is popular for its 10 p.m. ghost tour, which is free for guests and $10 for other visitors. A 1920s bride who took her life there after her new husband died in a car crash is said to still wander the hotel.
