From Planet Hollywood to a Hotel W in Gray
One generation's Gotham is another's Peninsula. The Shelton and Americana of yesterday are the Marriott East Side and Sheraton New York of today. Hotels change all the time.
Few, however, have changed as much before opening day as the 57- story hotel at Broadway and 47th Street — an embryonic Planet Hollywood, prospective Sheraton and possible Radisson before it became the W New York-Times Square, which it now seems fairly certain to be
when it makes its debut in December.
Everything is to open at once: Blue Fin, a 400-seat, seafood-sushi- and-jazz restaurant operated by Steve Hanson; the Whiskey, a basement bar, lounge and screening room operated by Rande Gerber; a lobby shop called Wish (or maybe Want), by the proprietors of Troy in SoHo; and 509 guest rooms that had to be redesigned and rebuilt to fit the W image — cool, spare and all gray.
"We're launching the most important hotel in our brand," said Guy Hensley, senior vice president of W, the three-year-old boutique hotel division of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. "It should be complete."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/29/nyregion/29REAL.html
(Bolding of opening date is mine)
[This message has been edited by wigstheone (edited 08-29-2001).]