New Jersey
Construction began at the Natirar Mansion, a historic property located within a 500-acre estate in the Somerset Hills. The 40-room Tudor mansion, completed in 1912, is being restored and a new ballroom is being built adjacent to the mansion. The property, which already has a pool, tennis courts and a fitness and wellness center, will include private residential villas, a boutique hotel and spa once complete. The estate features Ninety Acres, a restaurant built in the restored carriage house, and includes a cooking school, private club and 12-acre farm that supplies the ingredients. The restaurant and cooking school are available for private events, both inside the carriage house or outdoors surrounded by the farm.
New York
Joie de Vivre Hotels will open its first hotel in New York City, Hotel 50 Bowery, at the end of this year. Set in Chinatown, the design of the 229-room hotel is inspired by the Lower Manhattan location and is home to The Gallery, a permanent exhibit from the Museum of Chinese in America that includes a resident curator, Herb Tam. Adjacent to the exhibit is a 5,000-square-foot outdoor space, the Atlantic Garden, named after the historic beer hall that occupied the site in the 1850s. The hotel will also offer 1,900 square feet of indoor function space along with three restaurant, bar and lounge concepts from celebrity chef Dale Talde.
The Westin Buffalo opened in the center of downtown with 116 guest rooms. The on-site restaurant, Patina 250, specializes in wood-fired cooking, while Jake’s Cafe offers the brand’s SuperFoodsRX menu. The hotel also features the brand’s RunWESTIN program with three- and five-mile jogging routes through the city, and the property will be a hub for Buffalo’s new Reddy Bikeshare program. The hotel also features 7,300 square feet of meeting and event space, including the 3,500-square-foot ballroom, a smaller ballroom, a meeting room and boardroom as well as an outdoor courtyard that can accommodate nearly 300 guests. The hotel is near the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Buffalo Niagara Convention Center and Canalside, the city’s newly redeveloped waterfront.
Washington, D.C.
Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants completed the multimillion-dollar redesign of Kimpton Hotel Monaco Washington DC. The building, which was built by Robert Mills, the designer of the Washington Monument and Thomas Walter, one of the architects of the U.S. Capitol, was the original General Post Office in the District. In 2002, the four-story, all-marble building underwent a transformation to become the Kimpton hotel and now features a new design inspired by the building’s classical architecture. The 183-room property debuted Dirty Habit, a new restaurant and bar, this fall. The hotel offers 7,000 square feet of meeting space with three meeting rooms, all named after international cities: Paris, Athens and Tokyo. The Paris Ballroom, a former library for the Postmaster General, has a dome skylight and can accommodate 300 guests.
Eastern Canada
The Sheraton Saint-Hyacinthe Hotel is slated to open in 2017 within Galeries Saint-Hyacinthe, a commercial and office complex, and will be connected to the new 230,000-square-foot Saint-Hyacinthe Congress Center. The hotel will feature 205 guest rooms spread over 16 floors and offer a third-party restaurant, fitness center, indoor pool and a Sheraton Club Lounge that will occupy the top floor. There will be 3,860 square feet of function space, including six meeting rooms. Galeries Saint-Hyacinthe is comprised of 150 stores and 170,000 square feet of existing office space.