Stephen Muss, a third-generation New York real estate developer who became a multimillionaire power broker after migrating to Florida — where, by reviving the flamboyant Fontainebleau Hotel, he helped transform Miami Beach from a refuge for older adults into a gaudy global resort — died Aug. 23 at his home in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He was 97.
The death was confirmed by his daughter Melanie Muss.
Muss, an imposing (6-foot-5, 250 pounds) former Brooklynite with a graying leonine mane, seemed perfectly cast to become what The Miami Herald once called “the most powerful man in Miami Beach.”…