Morgans Enters Boston With the Ames Hotel

Andrew Calvo | June 19, 2008 | 0 Comments

Morgans Hotel Group is finally revving up the expansion machine that they have been talking about for so long with the announcement that they are going to be developing the Ames Hotel in the Ames Building located in downtown Boston.This hotel designed by the Rockwell Group will be a complete conversion of a former office building which is the first high rise in Boston (it was built in 1889). Part of the design that Rockwell will integrate will keep the original styling of the building rather than turn it into a completely contemporary design.

Perhaps this will be the beginning of the growth of the Morgans Hotel Group?

Morgan’s is uniquely able to lay claim to creating the first boutique hotel – but after almost 22 years, they still have only 10 hotels throughout the world, younger upstarts such as W Hotels, has almost triple the number of locations in a quarter of the time. Ever since Ian Schrager left Morgans, it seems as though the company has had difficulty getting back up on its feet in the development arena – not that the existing hotels have been suffering (they have become even more popular!) but the growth of the company just was not there. In the past few years the only things that have come out of Morgans are it’s ex-CEO’s infamous firing, purchase of the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas & the creation of the “Mondrian” brand, which Morgan’s seems to want to turn into its own chain – yet I don’t understand what makes all Mondrian’s alike vs Clift & Royalton.. Each and every Morgan’s hotel is designed differently from top to bottom, whereas if Morgans is trying to make Mondrian in to a brand, what will the brand be “known” for?

In any case, its great to see something happening with the Morgan’s development pipeline..

What is interesting about this is it’s one of the first projects that Morgan’s has undertaken with a major development partner being named first and foremost, in most of Morgan’s other projects, it has a majority interest in the hotel, whereas the Ames Hotel will only be 35% owned by Morgans – the reminder will be split between Ames Hotel Partners & Normandy Real Estate Partners.

An interesting fact in this whole thing is Normandy Real Estate Partners. Normandy is also a partner in The Chelsea hotel that is being built in Atlantic City by Cape Advisors, not only that – but Cape Advisors is also involved in building the Mondrian SoHo with Morgans Hotel Group. In otherwords, I’m a little surprised that Cape Advisor’s isn’t involved in the Ames Hotel since they have worked (or are working with) both Morgans & Normandy Real Estate. That doesn’t mean that every deal Morgans or Normandy is involved in requires them to bring in Cape Advisors, I just thought it was a little ironic.

I’m very interested to see what the Ames Hotel will turn out to be like – it’s the first hotel that Morgans has created from scratch that is not a Mondrian since Ian Schrager left the company. There have been plenty of rumors, and plenty of plans for additional Morgan’s hotels – mainly brand extensions of existing properties – the Delano & Mondrian in Las Vegas, Mondrian in South Beach & NYC. Call me crazy but it seems as though Morgan’s had such a great thing going by creating different hotel names – why not keep that up?

Hopefully the Ames will not get the bad reviews that the Royalton has been receiving since it was recently renovated, and as has been quoted in the news release – it will keep the same “avant garde” design as all existing Morgan’s Hotels have become famous for.

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