Inside Bill Dean’s Waterfront Miami Compound

After renovating his P street home and building the award-winning Oyster House in the northern neck of Virginia, Georgetown’s best-known bachelor Bill Dean set his sights on something bigger: a waterfront compound in Miami Beach.

Dean checked out the sprawling $8 million property in Miami Beach, which was built by Sebastian Spering Kresge of K-Mart fame, for the first time in 2009. Shortly after, he flew in local architect Dale Overmyer, who spearheaded Dean’s earlier architectural projects, to take a peak. After the two talked over the necessary renovations, Dean bought the place and Overmyer got to work upgrading it, reportedly costing Dean over $32 million.

“We ended up completely rebuilding every inch of it,” Overmyer says.

Photos from the site in 2010 show something that looks more like a warzone than a construction site. (Overmyer says, “We saved two trees but there wasn’t a blade of grass left [post-construction.]”)

The finished project, on the other hand, is unrivaled by even the Playboy Mansion, with 11 bedrooms (and even more bathrooms), a number of courtyards, several swimming pools, a tennis court, a Grotto, a nightclub, a spa, a gym and much more. (“Ballers,” a fictional show glamorizing the lives of NFL players, shot two episodes at the compound.)

“I got to work with some wonderfully exotic materials,” Overmyer says of the project, touching on the handmade shells that cover the interior of the Grotto’s roof and the circular tiles that look like suction cups in the compound’s “Octopus Room” before noting the master bathroom’s Roman tub.

Check out selected images from Bill Dean’s Miami villa below and be sure to read our feature on Overmyer architects in the Nov. 4 issue of The Georgetowner.