>>51310450“Savvy, obsessive and wildly uncouth, Dezer, 48, is the crown prince of Sunny Isles Beach, a roughly two-square-mile realm just north of Miami. Once home to sleepy motels, it now features a row of branded, Dubai-like luxury towers that stand as brash monuments to south Florida’s property boom. Many were conjured from the sands by Dezer and his father, Michael.
The one with the never-ending marble is the Dezers’ 56-storey Residences by Armani/Casa. It was preceded by a half-dozen Trumpy towers — Trump International, Trump Palace, Trump Royale and so forth. And there is the Porsche Design Tower, which features the innovation that Dezer will be remembered for when the definitive chronicle of this gilded era is written: The Dezervator.
This is a patented elevator that whisks car and driver from the Porsche Design Tower’s garage to their apartment, depositing them just outside the living room. That description — while technically accurate — does not quite capture the glee of a ride on the Dezervator. I took mine seated in a Porsche SUV. We were pulled aboard by a robotic dolly; the doors closed; and we zoomed up 38 floors in a glass-sealed cabin, spinning as we went. As the floors whooshed past I was reminded of Disney’s Space Mountain rollercoaster and the vacuum tubes once common at drive-through banks. Willy Wonka would have loved it.
The Dezervator is whimsy. But it is also, according to Dezer, a means to deliver what has become the ultimate of luxuries in an overheated Miami condo market in which en-suite saunas, hammams, wine cellars, multiple gyms, Japanese toilets, concierge service, yacht slips, polished mahogany, onyx sconces and the rest have lost their capacity to wow. That something is privacy. Thanks to the Dezervator, a Porsche Tower resident can drive into the building and emerge in their apartment without ever having to encounter another human being.
That appeals to football star Lionel Messi, who bought a Porsche unit. (Dezer cut him a deal in exchange for a few flattering social media posts.) It is apparently also appealing to others who are less recognisable but may still wish to avoid the gaze of, say, a jealous spouse. Or a business rival. Or the Venezuelan tax authorities. Or perhaps they simply wish to be spared the sad spectacle of the common man.
How the 749ft-tall Bentley Residences in Miami might look when completed
Miami developers boast about the care they take to ensure that their properties hermetically seal the ultra-rich from each other and the rest of us. Dezer gets this. “Privacy is a luxury. You should write that down,” he instructed me. Moments earlier, he had gestured towards another unanticipated luxury: a mattress-sized space in the interior laundry room of a $7mn flat. “This is where the South Americans put their maids,” he remarked. “It’s a thing.””
