It’s all but official that Starwood Capital’s first Crillon hotel in New York City (and possibly America) will be located in the Steinway Building on 57th Street in Manhattan. If you recall, this building was purchased by Starwood Capital over the summer and is right next to the Ritz Cleaners which was purchased by Starwood Capital last year and subsequently demolished.

Starwood hasn’t said much about their plans for Crillon – except for the given – that their hotels will be very very high end, catering to the same clientele who frequents the Hotel de Crillon in Paris. Starwood was expected to have announced details on the Crillon brand in Mid-October, but as of yet, nothing has been said.

I took a ride by the Steinway Building, located at 109 W 57th Street in Manhattan recently, mainly because I wanted to see the area and also if any construction had started on the building. I have to admit, I felt like a tourist driving down 57th street – all very high end stores everywhere you turned, almost like 5th Ave (except for the manhole cover missing in the middle of the road causing a traffic jam). But I wanted to get a feel for the area – what did the area “Feel” like it should have – a 1Hotel, a Baccarat, or a Crillon? I think a 1Hotel was pretty much ruled out since they are already building one in Bryant Park, and I always thought a Baccarat would be more for a resort type area (plus, the two Baccarat’s that have been announced are going to be resorts – Baccarat Wailea in Hawaii, and Baccarat Water Cay in Turks & Caicos) so that leaves a Crillon, which makes perfect sense due to the high end retail area up and down 57th Street. If you’ve never seen the Steinway building before, it just has the look of a very high end, exclusive establishment, very much an older facade; no 50 stories of plate glass windows in this building.

When I drove by a few weeks ago, besides the Ritz Cleaners building having been already demolished, I could not see any type of construction activity, and Steinway building looks as though it hasn’t been touched. I have not seen any renderings for the proposed hotel yet, but I think its safe to assume that a larger tower will be built on the Ritz Cleaners site, and will be blended in with the Steinway building.

Image from Google StreetView of the Steinway building and the former Ritz Cleaners site to the right.

Once the Crillon opens on 57th Street it will be joined by a number of additional high end hotels. Currently, from what I could gather, there are already a few hotels on 57th – the Parker Le Meriden (one of the few Le Meridien’s that Starwood Capital does not own), the Four Seasons, Buckingham Hotel, Hotel 57, the Hotel Salisbury, and a timeshare hotel called West 57th Street by Hilton Club. Just today I was reading through Real Deal where they had an article of an extremely high end boutique hotel soon to be built on 57th, with a retail component – and nightly room rates starting at $1,000. That hotel is currently unnamed and unmanaged, but according to the article a major boutique hotelier will run it (Ian Schrager? Morgans Hotel Group? Andres Baldaz? I don’t know too many other boutique hoteliers who have experience in the extremely high end range). Then the article closes off with Extell Development building a 5 star luxury hotel on 57th between sixth and seventh.

Whew! Who knew that 57th Street would be the next luxury hotel free-for-all in New York City?

andrew@alconic-inc.com