The Cipriani restaurant family, the owner of Harry’s Bar in Venice and two restaurants in Manhattan, is planning to open a luxury hotel and banquet hall beneath the marble rotunda and Ionic columns of the landmark building at 55 Wall St. in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district.
The Cipriani family and two investors bought 55 Wall St. in late September for $27 million. They plan to spend $30 million converting the 155-year-old former bank building into a restaurant and 160-room hotel. The Ciprianis’ partners are Sidney Kimmel, an apparel entrepreneur whose company produces a midprice clothing line for women, Jones New York, and T. Richard Butera, who owns the landmark Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colo.
The Wall Street project was hailed as further proof that downtown New York is recovering from the recession of the early 1990s.
“It’s a terrific thing for downtown,” said Carl Weisbrod, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. “It demonstrates the diversification now under way in lower Manhattan and the strength of the hotel industry.”
Developers and hoteliers such as the Ritz-Carlton have long sought locations for a small luxury hotel in the downtown market, which is dominated by three large business-class hotels: the Marriott World Trade Center, the Marriott World Financial Center and the Millennium Hilton.
The deluxe hotel market is booming, with the occupancy rate averaging 76.8 percent in Manhattan, and room rates at deluxe hotels average $309 a night, a 7.3 percent increase from last year’s average, according to hotel consultants at Coopers & Lybrand.
“There’s clearly a demand for luxury accommodations down there that is unfulfilled,” said Arthur Adler, a lodging and gaming consultant with Coopers & Lybrand.
But some real estate executives question whether there is room for more than one high-end hotel downtown, where occupancy rates fall dramatically on the weekends. The Cipriani project may spoil Donald Trump’s plans to lure a hotelier into his nearby tower at 40 Wall St., they say.
The Cipriani family says it has no misgivings.
“It’ll be the most exclusive hotel in America, with the most gorgeous banquet hall,” said Giuseppe Cipriani, chairman of Cipriani Holding Group, which also operates Harry Cipriani, a restaurant at the Sherry Netherland hotel on Fifth Avenue, and Downtown, a restaurant in Soho.
Butera is enthusiastic about the prospects for converting the striking 30,000-square-foot rotunda, with its 70-foot ceiling, into a banquet hall and the six floors above into hotel rooms. He said the partners have been working with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which oversees the building’s landmark exterior and plans to designate the interior a landmark as well.
“We’re custodians of a great property,” Butera said, “and we need to recognize that and treat it with all the sensitivity that requires.”
Despite the building’s aesthetic value, 55 Wall St. has a troubled financial history. Kajima Corp. of Japan paid $70 million for the building in 1990, but ran into trouble when its prime tenant, Citibank, left in 1993.
Last year, Kajima had a $23 million deal to sell the property to House of Blues, a theme restaurant featuring live music. When that deal fell through, Trump took over the sales contract and tried to lease the space to House of Blues and the Ritz-Carlton.
Trump later was sued by Kajima when he tried to cut the price to $18 million, or back out, the lawsuit claimed. Ultimately, Credit Suisse First Boston bought the property for $21.15 million and began talking to the Cipriani family.
