Dev Motwani and Nitin Motwani

Dev and Nitin Motwani’s family moved from Missouri to Fort Lauderdale in 1986, and bought a motel just before the city decided to clean up its wild spring break reputation. Some frustrated motel operators left, but the Motwanis were on board with city officials’ desire to remake the beachfront area, and they eventually acquired a city block of properties that had been foreclosed on.

“We didn’t have a choice. They had arrested tens of thousands of kids for open containers,” Nitin Motwani said. “Rather than pack up and leave, my parents got involved with the city and worked very hard with them to turn it into a family destination.”

The Motwani brothers both went to Duke University and pursued finance careers on Wall Street, but the appeal of investing in South Florida and managing their family’s growing real estate empire was strong. Nitin returned in 2004. Dev followed two years later, and helped sell the first parcel of land their family had acquired, which became a Conrad hotel.

“When we had the ability to buy back into the deal we realized we weren’t in the motel business, we were in the development business,” Motwani said. “When we met with developers we realized, ‘Wow, this is really interesting.’ ”

Dev helped his mother run the business, which eventually involved bringing a Four Seasons Hotel to Fort Lauderdale. Nitin moved to Miami in 2008 and developed several hotels and multifamily properties, not to mention Miami Worldcenter, the $6 billion mixed-use retail, hospitality, office and residential project. 

When the pandemic hit, the brothers decided they missed working together and formed Merrimac Ventures. They’ve since sold most of their short-term rental units at Miami Worldcenter and are currently developing luxury hospitality and residential properties in Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach and Telluride, Colo.

“It just made more sense to formalize what was already an informal structure,” Dev Motwani said. “We had a decade of developing our own identity and working style and having our own successes individually, but to the benefit of each other, so it was nice.”