The Next Lincoln Road?

If you don’t know Keith Menin or Jared Galbut, you surely know their trendsetting work on the South Beach hospitality scene: Bodega, the Gale, Red Ginger, and other establishments we remind you of below. Now these hard-charging young entrepreneurs have set their sights on…Washington Avenue.

Keith, 35, points out that long before the revival of Ocean Drive, Collins, or Lincoln Road, Washington Avenue was a center of action. His own grandfather's diner in the 1920s was at 5th and Washington; his father's law office decades later was on Washington at 7th, then 9th; and his family had an auto tag business at 999 Washington. Appropriately, in the picture we snapped yesterday in his office, it looks like Keith is donning a cape to join Batman and Superman to rescue the area…

…but, alas, he was just putting on his suit jacket for another photo shoot (in the background)—leaving us to snap his cousin and Menin Hospitality co-founder Jared, 34.

Much of Washington Avenue, Keith says, is neglected and deteriorating; we snapped these storefronts yesterday on the east side of the street, across from the Chelsea and Astor hotels.

So they’re jumping in. On the 900 block, they're planning this summer to start building a "cool boutique hotel”: 63 keys, outdoor café, architected by Urban Robot. They say it will dovetail with improvements the city is making, like bringing in light rail, landscaping and a small parklet.

In the process, they hope it will spur other development so that eventually you’ll see an all-new Washington Avenue all the way from Fifth to Lincoln.

What’s the common denominator of their Washington Avenue vision and their other projects? All intend to be “ahead of the curve," like the wildly popular Bodega Taqueria y Tequila they opened a year ago, when they anticipated nightclubs going out and bars coming in.

And where in four months they’ll be adding an adjacent "bar-cade" named Ricky's.

Likewise, their café concept Bakehouse opens next month on First Street (next to Radio Bar, which they opened four years ago).

Sanctuary South Beach, which they did on James Street in 2006, was one of the first boutique hotels off Collins, like the Gale South Beach was one of the first hotels on a “dry lot” off the beach side of the street.

At 16th and Alton, where their uncle Russell Galbut, co-founder of national powerhouse Crescent Heights, bought the iconic Firestone gas station in January, they will be doing a casual restaurant and bar. And they’re working with Newgard to take the Gale brand to Ft Lauderdale—150 residences and 100 hotel rooms, in an area they see poised for dramatic change over the next five years.

Besides loving real estate and hospitality (he went to the famed Cornell School of Hotel Administration), Keith has a fondness for Swedish fish (the candy, as shown). Other factoids about Keith you may not know:

Favorite music: Kygo (Norwegian DJ), “tropical chill”; here’s an aptly named tune, Firestone
Where he listens: on Soundcloud at home on North Bay Road
TV show: Blacklist (NBC with James Spader and Megan Boone)
Go-to food joint they don't own: Lucali at Sunset Harbor for pizza
Vacation destination: St. Barth's (esp. after the holidays)
New hobby: took up skiing this year, went to Aspen and Deer Valley
Startling fact: wanted to learn about real estate, so at age 16 spent summer working on nursing home at Jackson Hospital, doing tiling, roofing, plastering and electrical. [Editor’s note: Hope he didn’t leave any Swedish fish in the walls.]

We decided to go light on Jared and just asked his favorite music: Billy Joel doing Vienna.