A Double Flop for the Fontainebleau

Like many of the men who built South Florida, Donald Soffer is a transplant, a native of Pennsylvania steel country who began making his fortune putting up shopping centers in and around Pittsburgh. Turning to Miami in the late '60s he plunked down more malls and branched into condo towers and planned communities. His son Jeffrey helped steer Turnberry Associates, the family business, toward more upscale projects—then overreached. In 2005, Jeffrey formed Fontainebleau Resorts and spent $3 billion of mostly borrowed money renovating the iconic Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach and starting work on a lavish casino resort in Las Vegas.

His timing could hardly have been worse. The unfinished Vegas project has already been lost to bankruptcy—billionaire investor Carl Icahn scavenged it in February—and Jeffrey Soffer is now fending off lawsuits and scrambling to hold on to the Miami resort.