Touring the Completed, Eco-Crazy, 1 Hotel South Beach

News originally broke back in early 2013 that the old rambling barn of a hotel originally known as the Roney Palace when it was built in the 1960s (on the site of the former Roney Plaza, but that's a story for another day), and then the Gansevoort, was going under the knife for its biggest transformation yet to become the 1 Hotel & Homes South Beach. Since then, Miami has watched Starwood Hotels slice and dice the property up, massively rework it, and turn a giant building practically designed to guzzle energy into a much more sustainable machine. This is also the first 1 Hotel in the world. A second, in New York, will be completed this summer. Curbed Miami photog Karli Evans went to take a look.

Although we got a taste of the hotel's residential section when construction was completed on its lobby back in 2014, that was still just a taste, a tip of the iceberg of the completed property. With plenty of square footage, the new hotel is big, with 426 very spacious guest rooms that start at $700 a night, four pools, and five food & beverage outlets, and it effectively uses that space with meaningful design. The hotel is very luxurious, but it's also eco-obsessive with a laundry list of green amenities, a combination that has led to some inspired results but also a few compromises for the sake of effectively running a hotel. There are reclaimed wood key cards, reusable socks instead of slippers, 'Do nut disturb' signs made out of boxes that things shipped to the hotel were in, room glasses made out of custom wine bottles, a giant living wall out front, chalk notepads for the nightstands, toiletry dispensers in the showers, terrariums instead of cut flowers (because that's murdering them), and clothes hangers made out of recycled paper. Curbed noticed a few lights that maybe could have been turned off during the day. But in an industry known for its profligate level of waste, these are big steps, and those are just a few of the hotel's many, many green features.

· Inside the Eco-Concious Sensation that is 1 Hotel South Beach [HotelChatter]
· 1 Hotel South Beach coverage [Curbed Miami]