Miami's 1969 Coconut Grove hotel that served as an operational headquarters for cocaine kingpins alongside rock stars, politicians, and confirmed FBI and DEA operatives throughout the 1970s and 1980s
2951 S Bayshore Dr, Miami, FL 33133
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Luxury suite hotel; rates vary by season
Access
Wheelchair OK
Urban bayfront hotel with paved access
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1968 · Miami Cocaine Cowboy Era · Documented FBI/DEA/CIA operational presence · Cultural history — Scarface inspiration
The building at 2951 South Bayshore Drive was constructed in 1968 by developer Burton Goldberg as a 105-suite apartment complex named Sailboat Bay. The apartments were converted to hotel units in 1976, and the property opened as the Mutiny Hotel.
By the late 1970s, the Mutiny had become the operational social center of Miami's cocaine trade. The hotel operated a members-only nightclub frequented by a clientele that journalist Roben Farzad — who wrote the definitive account in his 2017 book Hotel Scarface — described as the leading seller of Dom Pérignon in the United States. Drug trafficker Ricardo "Monkey" Morales used the hotel as an office. Carlos Fernando Quesada, a dealer, maintained a private table. Musicians including Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, and Crosby and Nash were regular guests; Nash later referenced the property directly in the song titled "Mutiny."
FBI, DEA, and CIA operatives were documented as using the property simultaneously alongside the traffickers they were variously surveilling, cultivating, or protecting. This layering of federal agents and their targets in the same nightclub created the atmosphere that Farzad characterized as a criminal free-trade zone. The era's violence extended to the property itself: Morales was shot and killed around Christmas 1982.
A 1987 police raid targeted a party with approximately 100 attendees. By the late 1980s, the hotel's reputation as a drug den had consumed its earlier social prestige, and the property declined. A $28 million renovation completed in 1999 reopened it as a luxury condominium-hotel. The Mutiny operates today as a four-star hotel managed by Provident Resorts, overlooking Sailboat Bay.
Sources
The Mutiny Hotel's inclusion in Miami's paranormal tourism circuit rests on documented history rather than ghost lore. The property hosted a convergence of celebrity culture, serious narcotics trafficking, and active federal intelligence operations in a physical space that was, formally speaking, a hotel. The deaths and violence connected to the cocaine trade — including Morales's killing — occurred in and around the property's social milieu.
Ghost Tours Miami's treatment of the Mutiny on its Coconut Grove walking circuit uses the documented history of the property as its material: the simultaneous presence of law enforcement and the people they were supposed to be investigating, the coded transactions conducted across the nightclub's private tables, and the violent ends of several of the hotel's most regular occupants.
The film Scarface (1983) drew directly on the Mutiny's cultural context — though the actual filming took place at other Miami locations. The book Hotel Scarface (2017) provides the most thorough documented account of the property's operational history during its peak decade.
No specific ghost sightings or paranormal claims have been documented at the current property by investigators. The dark tourism draw is historical: the Mutiny is one of the few places in the United States where the documented social history of major drug trafficking is physically located and still operating as a functioning hotel.
Media Appearances
The property offers luxury suites overlooking Sailboat Bay in Coconut Grove, managed by Provident Resorts. The building was originally constructed in 1968 as a 105-suite apartment complex and converted to hotel units in 1976. A $28 million renovation was completed in 1999 prior to the current operation.
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