Anybody remember the W Hotel – Sunset? Probably not.

All hotel brands experience the occasional deal falling through – sometimes even a year or so after it was announced, and sometimes even when construction has started. In fact, the current economic climate will show that more and more in the near future.

Usually whenever a hotel is cancelled – immediately all references to it online disappear, from the official website of the brand, to the architect, etc.

Occasionally one falls through the cracks – or the architect is still so proud of it’s creation, they see no reason to remove it from their website. Recently I came across one hotel in that situation.

On Starwood Hotel’s Development website are these brochures for each one of their brands, for the most part they are kept fairly up-to-date, but the brochure for W Hotels is badly outdated, so outdated that it has stats on hotels to open in 2006 – that currently are not scheduled to open until 2009, also stats on hotels that have been cancelled and will never see the light of day.

Ever hear of the W Sunset Hotel?

This is one of the hotels on that W Hotels development brochure – it was supposed to open in 2008, and was supposed to be built by the same developer as the W Scottsdale (another hotel that was significantly delayed – originally scheduled to open in 2006, it just opened last month – August 2008.)

The W Sunset was supposed to be located in Los Angeles on the corner of La Cienega Blvd and Sunset Blvd, in a development called “Sunset Millennium” which was to include a Marriott Courtyard, the W Sunset and some restaurants. This was going to be in addition to the W Hollywood which was less than three miles away on Hollywood & Vine (the W Hollywood is now under construction).

Property where W Sunset was to be located.

From what I’ve been able to find out – the development of the Sunset Millennium project has been put on hold, or stopped. Their website is under construction, and no new information can be found since 2005. It looks as though the original developer, Apollo Real Estate Investors & Wolff Urban Management sold the property to Broadreach Capital Partners in December of 2006, although its not clear if that is the entire property – or just a portion of it which includes a 10-story office building.

So is the W Sunset dead? I think its a good possibility, since the Sunset Millennium website is not working and nothing has been said of the project in years by Starwood or anyone else, but it would be nice to see a W there.

Surprisingly W only has one hotel in Los Angeles right now – the W Westwood, which is a very popular hotel with celebrities and TV shows, even Enrique Iglesias used it for interior and exterior shots in his music video “Do You Know” the W Hollywood will be a much needed expansion of the brand into the town – but with NYC having 6 W’s open or under construction, and Atlanta having 3 open or under construction – LA needs more W’s to keep up its cachet of being hip and the place for celebrities to go.

If you didn’t click the link up top – here is a link to the architects website for the W Sunset. The renderings are very much concepts – but you can really get a good idea as to the direction they were going. It reminds me a lot of the W Miami and W Scottsdale with the non-uniformity between all the rooms, and the straight edges around the balconies.

If any new news comes out about the W Sunset (which I’m not expecting) I’ll be sure to let everyone know.

andrew@alconic-inc.com

Popularity: 8% [?]