San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino
The San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino is a hotel and casino located on the beach in Condado, San Juan, Puerto Rico. It is operated by Marriott International. History The hotel was designed by architects Osvaldo L. Toro and Miguel Ferrer and opened on October 4, 1963 as the Puerto Rico-Sheraton Hotel. Directly on the beach in Condado, it boasted an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Sheraton sold the property to the San Juan Dupont Plaza Corp. of Delaware in 1979 and it was renamed the Dupont Plaza Hotel. On December 31, 1986, the Dupont Plaza was the site of the second deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history, started by disgruntled employees in the middle of a labor/salary dispute. The fire claimed 97 lives and left 140 people injured. The San Juan Dupont Plaza Corp renovated the hotel in 1988, at a cost of $9 million, and renamed it the Palm Hotel and Casino. A reopening was announced for early 1989, but it was cancelled on December 19, 1988, when the Puerto Rican government refused to grant the hotel an operating permit, because the owners had only installed sprinklers in the hotel's first three floors, and not throughout the entire building.