Compass Landing by Margaritaville delayed until summer 2025

BY MIKE GAFFEY

A targeted opening date for Melbourne’s Compass Landing by Margaritaville, a resort inspired by tropical troubadour Jimmy Buffett, has been pushed back from fall 2024 to late 2025.

Construction at the 4.6-acre riverfront site along U.S. 1 has been temporarily slowed, said a representative for the project’s developer, Mirpuri Real Estate Holdings LLC.

“There is a pause in the project,” said Rhonda Butler, an office coordinator in Mirpuri’s Indialantic office.

Site work originally began in October 2022 on the estimated $65 million complex at 705 S. Harbor City Blvd.

Plans call for a seven-story, 146room hotel overlooking the Indian River Lagoon, a two-story, 400-seat restaurant, a 221-slip, recreationaluse marina for 30- to 50-foot boats, a 14,000-square-foot event lawn area with an entertainment stage, a fourlevel parking garage and a public boardwalk promenade.

Cheryl Marr, Melbourne’s public information officer, said boardwalk work is still proceeding at the site, “but that’s the only activity the city’s been made aware of.”

Located just north of NASA Boulevard and south of Cherry Street, the long-vacant property adjacent to the Marina Towers office building has been occupied by several restaurants since the 1980s: Shooters, Skipper’s,

Dixie Crossroads and Coral Bay. In 2004, back-to-back hurricanes Frances and Jeanne badly damaged Coral Bay, and the restaurant was torn down in 2011.

The new marina is scheduled to be built on three submerged acres at the site of the old Intracoastal Marina, which also closed after the 2004 hurricanes.

A dry-storage boat building on the property was damaged by Hurricane Irma in 2017 and later demolished.

Other Compass hotels are in Bradenton, Florida, and Medford, Oregon, and new locations are opening soon in Naples, Florida, Beaufort, North Carolina., and North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Debuting in 2020, Compass by Margaritaville celebrates the laidback, island lifestyle chronicled by