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Bucking terrorism, recession, and increased competition, Barry Sternlicht opens the Times Square W.
By Julie Lasky
Photographed by Juliana Sohn for Metropolis
April 2002
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A bathroom in the new 57-story W Times Square, the first hotel to open
in Manhattan since September 11. The hotel, with interior design by Yabu
Pushelberg, aims to merge Schrager/Starck hipness with the more
practical concerns of business travelers.
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What does W stand for? Don't ask. A representative of Starwood Hotels
& Resorts Worldwide, which owns the stylish hotel chain, will start
chanting alliterative words like warm, welcoming, whimsical,
even wired. A better question is why the W Times Square made its
debut on December 27, when so many Americans were avoiding air travel. It
was New York's first new hotel since September 11--and couldn't have
opened at a worse time.
Consider that January is habitually the travel industry's slowest month.
Then consider that months before the terror attacks put the hotel business
through a meat grinder, it had been tenderized by an economic downturn.
In December the New York Times reported that annual 2001 occupancy
rates for New York hotels were expected to average 72.5 percent, a 12.1
percent decline from the preceding year. Factoring in both continued fallout
from September 11 and the planned arrival of five new Manhattan hotels,
projected rates for 2002 are 68.5 percent.
So what was Starwood's chairman, Barry Sternlicht, thinking when he rushed
to launch his sixteenth W--fifth in New York, and first on the
West Side? "I thought it would be a good morale boost for the city,"
he says. His message? "We're still here, we're healthy, and we're moving
forward."
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Upstairs (above) and downstairs (below) at the Blue Fin
restaurant. Partnering with successful restaurateurs is part of the W's
scene-making strategy.
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In early January the 57-story hotel, at the corner of Broadway and 47th
Street, was roughly 60 percent full--not bad, considering that it looked
about 90 percent done. One of the designers, Glenn Pushelberg, of the Toronto
firm Yabu Pushelberg, was still mentally adding benches to the lobby's
furniture, and construction workers were shuffling around the unfinished
basement nightclub, the Whiskey. Meanwhile the hotel's seafood restaurant,
Blue Fin, was stuffed (at least on the ground floor; the second floor
still awaited surfacing materials). Chatter ricocheted off the wood floors
and floated up to the double-height ceiling; you couldn't hear yourself
compliment the chef. This was Times Square, after all. On Wednesday, matinee
day in the theater district, playgoers were mixing with the finance
and media types who work in the area's newly built towers. And somewhere
in there, maybe, actual hotel guests were eating, too.
W's success depends on attracting a scene, but that's only half of what
the hotel chain does best. All of the properties combine the social charisma
of boutique hotels with the business-oriented services and incentive programs
offered by more conventional chains (including Starwood's own Sheratons
and Westins). Ian Schrager is credited with inventing arty urban lodgings
for hipsters; he began in the 1980s with Morgans, an East Side Manhattan
hotel designed by Andrée Putman. But Sternlicht advanced the concept
to jibe with the New Economy. Starting in December 1998 with the W New York,
on Lexington and 49th Street, he conceived chic hotels for people between
20 and 45 who need to work as vigorously as they unwind. W guest rooms have
desks that are a minimum of six feet long, and they offer cordless phones
as well as landlines. And because this clientele apparently believes that
the shorter the route between a conference call and a Cosmopolitan the better,
a bar is parked in every lobby (the "living room," in W speak).
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A nighttime view of Times Square from one of the rooms.
Photo by James Baigrie
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Taking a page out of Schrager's book (some say ripping out whole chapters),
Sternlicht revitalized the concept of the hotel as spectacle--a backdrop
for preening and flirting. Staffers, known as "cast members,"
are culled from acting and modeling agencies. Recently Kenneth Cole was
recruited to dress them; both men and women at the W Times Square wear striped
gray pantsuits and leather jackets in an ensemble that can go from reception
desk to audition if necessary. But when W was criticized for poor service--a
typical complaint leveled at boutique hotels, whose employees often have
better grooming than people skills--it imposed a "whatever, whenever"
policy. Now guests are invited to submit their whims 24 hours a day. Perhaps
to curtail more feverish impulses, the literature suggests filling
the tub with chocolate milk.
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The ground-floor elevator lobby (above)--equipped with an indoor
waterfall--and the seventh-floor reception lobby (below) are designed to
feel like sanctuaries from the chaos of Times Square.
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"Most people think, 'Boutique--I'm going to be sitting on a
hard chair, sleeping on a rock, with no lighting and a phone I can't take
five feet with me,'" Sternlicht says. He's trying not to banish
the word but redefine it in terms that suggest comfort, efficiency,
and the personal touches a hotel chain can easily bestow if it has a computer
system that recalls which guests like massages and then automatically books
the appointments. "I think the difference between us and Ian is we're
building a brand."
Brand-building demands time and cash; and business travelers can't be depended
on when the economy takes a dive. Two of W's dominant markets are New York
and Northern California, where clients in technology, media, and advertising
lost jobs or cut back expenses when the Internet bubble burst. And then
the Twin Towers collapsed. In late September Starwood, which owns nearly
750 hotels in more than 80 countries, announced layoffs of 10,000 employees,
representing 8 percent of its workforce. Conditions were so bad that Sternlicht
approached government officials to ask that hotel companies be part
of the federal package to bail out the airlines. The debt-rating company
Fitch downgraded Starwood's bonds in January to below investment grade in
anticipation of continued travel industry declines, especially among business
travelers, who make up 90 percent of the company's market.
For a short time after the attacks Sternlicht even considered converting
the W Times Square building into offices for displaced downtown businesses.
A former Planet Hollywood Hotel that never had a chance (the company went
bankrupt shortly before its planned December 1999 opening), it was wired
for high-speed Internet access and inured to hard luck. Star-wood had already
filled all 650 rooms of its Sheraton Manhattan hotel with Lehman Brothers
employees, uprooting beds and shipping in desks; the Planet Hollywood building
would need even less of a retrofit.
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