One Traveler's Opinion: Two New York Hotels
Aug 21st, 2000, 12:24 PM
#1
Guest
Posts: n/a
One Traveler's Opinion: Two New York Hotels
I have of late had the opportunity to spend several days in New York, and have stayed at two different hotels, the Grand Hyatt and the Regent Wall Street. Herewith a report.
Back in the mid 1970s, New York City had been pretty much given up for lost. The Daily News printed its famous headline, “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” when the federal government refused a bail out for the bankrupt municipality. The conventional wisdom was that the last person to leave the city should remember to (as they say in the Big Apple), “close the lights.” But a funny thing happened on the way to publishing New York’s obituary: the invalid recovered. Not all at once and not without pain, but gradually the graffiti disappeared from the subways, the crime rate ebbed, and the employment losses became gains.
If there was one symbol of the New York recovery, it was a brash young developer from Queens named Donald Trump. His father has built a low-key empire constructing and managing middle-income apartments in the boroughs. Donald, though, had his eye on Manhattan, and his first project was the rebuilding of the old Commodore Hotel by Grand Central Station. An on-again, off-again project since the early part of the decade, the Commodore symbolized everything that had gone wrong with New York. A once-proud Grande Dame has fallen into disrepair, and no one was willing to risk the capital to rebuild the property.
Along came The Donald, who (armed with tax abatements and grants) took on the challenge and began construction on what would become the New York Grand Hyatt. The old Commodore was stripped back to its skeleton and rebuilt as a slick, sleek, glass-skinned wonder. The Grand Hyatt was a marble-laden instant success when it opened in 1980. I stayed at the hotel recently to attend a conference being held there; I also had an opportunity to make use of one of the hotel’s suites for a series of meetings.
I am here to report that there is a thick layer of dust on the plastic bouquets in the lobby. I noticed the dust as I was riding up the escalator on my way to check in. Bouquets of plastic flowers are a bit of a downer when you’re paying $310 for a single room, it’s even more of a letdown when your “junior suite” is $665. But, this is New York and my company was footing the bill. Checking in at 3 p.m. was no simple task. There was a line of perhaps 20 people and exactly two very harried, overworked, and ultimately surly receptionists. One reason the line wasn’t moving (apart from the need for half a dozen more staffers on the desk) was that every time someone went to the “Gold Passport” line (for frequent Hyatt guests), the receptionist was obliged to break off from the transaction to aid whomever was in the Gold Passport line. In the end, it took 45 minutes from the time I rode up that escalator to the time I received my card for a room on the 33rd floor.
The Grand Hyatt has 1410 rooms, but my recollection of the hotel was that it was considerably shorter than 33 stories. Still, hotels can’t lie about those sorts of things, so I shrugged and headed for the elevators. My room turned out to be on the small side and very much in need of refurbishment. What probably looked very spiffy in 1980 seemed much less so twenty years later. The brown vinyl floor moldings were pulling away from the walls, the fluorescent lights in the bathroom glowed green through plastic fixtures that were long past needing replacement. The bathroom wallpaper was curling and the Formica counter showed much wear and tear. The bedspread was something brown and gold in a creepy synthetic fabric. The “amenities” consisted of small vials of shampoo and mouthwash and a bar of soap; not much different that would have been offered in the Super 8 Motel in Jersey City.
(part 1 of 3)
Back in the mid 1970s, New York City had been pretty much given up for lost. The Daily News printed its famous headline, “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” when the federal government refused a bail out for the bankrupt municipality. The conventional wisdom was that the last person to leave the city should remember to (as they say in the Big Apple), “close the lights.” But a funny thing happened on the way to publishing New York’s obituary: the invalid recovered. Not all at once and not without pain, but gradually the graffiti disappeared from the subways, the crime rate ebbed, and the employment losses became gains.
If there was one symbol of the New York recovery, it was a brash young developer from Queens named Donald Trump. His father has built a low-key empire constructing and managing middle-income apartments in the boroughs. Donald, though, had his eye on Manhattan, and his first project was the rebuilding of the old Commodore Hotel by Grand Central Station. An on-again, off-again project since the early part of the decade, the Commodore symbolized everything that had gone wrong with New York. A once-proud Grande Dame has fallen into disrepair, and no one was willing to risk the capital to rebuild the property.
Along came The Donald, who (armed with tax abatements and grants) took on the challenge and began construction on what would become the New York Grand Hyatt. The old Commodore was stripped back to its skeleton and rebuilt as a slick, sleek, glass-skinned wonder. The Grand Hyatt was a marble-laden instant success when it opened in 1980. I stayed at the hotel recently to attend a conference being held there; I also had an opportunity to make use of one of the hotel’s suites for a series of meetings.
I am here to report that there is a thick layer of dust on the plastic bouquets in the lobby. I noticed the dust as I was riding up the escalator on my way to check in. Bouquets of plastic flowers are a bit of a downer when you’re paying $310 for a single room, it’s even more of a letdown when your “junior suite” is $665. But, this is New York and my company was footing the bill. Checking in at 3 p.m. was no simple task. There was a line of perhaps 20 people and exactly two very harried, overworked, and ultimately surly receptionists. One reason the line wasn’t moving (apart from the need for half a dozen more staffers on the desk) was that every time someone went to the “Gold Passport” line (for frequent Hyatt guests), the receptionist was obliged to break off from the transaction to aid whomever was in the Gold Passport line. In the end, it took 45 minutes from the time I rode up that escalator to the time I received my card for a room on the 33rd floor.
The Grand Hyatt has 1410 rooms, but my recollection of the hotel was that it was considerably shorter than 33 stories. Still, hotels can’t lie about those sorts of things, so I shrugged and headed for the elevators. My room turned out to be on the small side and very much in need of refurbishment. What probably looked very spiffy in 1980 seemed much less so twenty years later. The brown vinyl floor moldings were pulling away from the walls, the fluorescent lights in the bathroom glowed green through plastic fixtures that were long past needing replacement. The bathroom wallpaper was curling and the Formica counter showed much wear and tear. The bedspread was something brown and gold in a creepy synthetic fabric. The “amenities” consisted of small vials of shampoo and mouthwash and a bar of soap; not much different that would have been offered in the Super 8 Motel in Jersey City.
(part 1 of 3)
Aug 21st, 2000, 12:25 PM
#2
Guest
Posts: n/a
(part 2 of 3)
The “suite” (room 1848) where I held my meetings consisted of a very small sitting area with furnishings that clearly hadn’t been updated since the hotel’s opening. The sofa sagged, the chairs caved, and the table appeared to be one of those cheesy round particleboard affairs that are perennially on sale at WalMart. But what bothered me more than the furnishings was that I was staring out my window into the side of Grand Central Station. Grand Central is not 18 stories high. From an 18th floor window, you should look over the top of Grand Central.
When my meetings were over, I set off to discover the secret of the Grand Hyatt. It didn’t take long. The hotel has a lobby, a mezzanine, a meeting room floor, a ballroom floor… and then the 14th floor. This was Donald Trump at his cheekiest: just eliminate ten floor numbers so everyone has a high floor number.
Conclusion: the Grand Hyatt is in desperate need of a top-to-bottom renovation. You can get a far nicer room for the same money at any one of a dozen New York hotels.
* * * *
My first brush with the free enterprise system came at the age of ten when I had a paper route. Six afternoons a week (there were afternoon newspapers back in the late Cretaceous Era) and Sunday morning, I offered my hundred or so customers doorstep delivery. Usually, rubber bands bound the paper, but on rainy days I had to insert each paper into a waxy, waterproof sleeve. I disliked the rain less for having to ride my bike through it than for having to buy those wax paper sleeves. A box of 500 rubber bands was, maybe, 50¢. One hundred sleeves were a quarter, cutting dangerously into the two-cent profit margin I made on each paper.
Last Thursday morning, my most recent brush with capitalism came at the new Regent Wall Street hotel. I was reminded of my days delivering newspapers because my copies of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times were delivered to my room in a forest green cloth drawstring bag. The newspapers were hanging there in their elegant bag alongside my gleaming, tissue-wrapped polished shoes. This is the definition of luxury.
When I travel to New York I tend to stay in Midtown. It’s the heart of the city with lots to see and do, day and night. Last Thursday morning, however, I had an 8:00 a.m. appointment at the World Trade Center, and so I stayed at the Regent, which opened only in December.
Like the Grand Hyatt, the Regent Wall Street is recycled from an earlier structure, but in this case, the predecessor building was the 1842 Merchant Exchange, a Greek Revival masterpiece, complete with a set of Corinthian columns fronting on Wall Street. It is now a nine-story hotel consisting of 144 rooms, nearly a third of them suites. Also like the Grand Hyatt, there were two receptionists on duty at the front desk when I checked in, but there was no line. The two women on duty had the earnest deportments of Cornell School of Hotel Management students serving their internships, and I was welcomed warmly, as though my arrival had filled in the missing piece of a puzzle. The modest lobby held two large Fantin-Latour-inspired bouquets of live flowers. It should go without saying that there wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen.
My room, number 609, was huge by New York standards, fully 35 feet deep from door to window with ten-foot ceilings throughout. I was in a “deluxe” room; a step up from “superior” but down from “Grand Deluxe” and the various levels of suites offered by the hotel. My rate was $375, although the posted rate in the closet was $545 to $750 and the hotel’s rate card lists the deluxe category as $650.
The “suite” (room 1848) where I held my meetings consisted of a very small sitting area with furnishings that clearly hadn’t been updated since the hotel’s opening. The sofa sagged, the chairs caved, and the table appeared to be one of those cheesy round particleboard affairs that are perennially on sale at WalMart. But what bothered me more than the furnishings was that I was staring out my window into the side of Grand Central Station. Grand Central is not 18 stories high. From an 18th floor window, you should look over the top of Grand Central.
When my meetings were over, I set off to discover the secret of the Grand Hyatt. It didn’t take long. The hotel has a lobby, a mezzanine, a meeting room floor, a ballroom floor… and then the 14th floor. This was Donald Trump at his cheekiest: just eliminate ten floor numbers so everyone has a high floor number.
Conclusion: the Grand Hyatt is in desperate need of a top-to-bottom renovation. You can get a far nicer room for the same money at any one of a dozen New York hotels.
* * * *
My first brush with the free enterprise system came at the age of ten when I had a paper route. Six afternoons a week (there were afternoon newspapers back in the late Cretaceous Era) and Sunday morning, I offered my hundred or so customers doorstep delivery. Usually, rubber bands bound the paper, but on rainy days I had to insert each paper into a waxy, waterproof sleeve. I disliked the rain less for having to ride my bike through it than for having to buy those wax paper sleeves. A box of 500 rubber bands was, maybe, 50¢. One hundred sleeves were a quarter, cutting dangerously into the two-cent profit margin I made on each paper.
Last Thursday morning, my most recent brush with capitalism came at the new Regent Wall Street hotel. I was reminded of my days delivering newspapers because my copies of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times were delivered to my room in a forest green cloth drawstring bag. The newspapers were hanging there in their elegant bag alongside my gleaming, tissue-wrapped polished shoes. This is the definition of luxury.
When I travel to New York I tend to stay in Midtown. It’s the heart of the city with lots to see and do, day and night. Last Thursday morning, however, I had an 8:00 a.m. appointment at the World Trade Center, and so I stayed at the Regent, which opened only in December.
Like the Grand Hyatt, the Regent Wall Street is recycled from an earlier structure, but in this case, the predecessor building was the 1842 Merchant Exchange, a Greek Revival masterpiece, complete with a set of Corinthian columns fronting on Wall Street. It is now a nine-story hotel consisting of 144 rooms, nearly a third of them suites. Also like the Grand Hyatt, there were two receptionists on duty at the front desk when I checked in, but there was no line. The two women on duty had the earnest deportments of Cornell School of Hotel Management students serving their internships, and I was welcomed warmly, as though my arrival had filled in the missing piece of a puzzle. The modest lobby held two large Fantin-Latour-inspired bouquets of live flowers. It should go without saying that there wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen.
My room, number 609, was huge by New York standards, fully 35 feet deep from door to window with ten-foot ceilings throughout. I was in a “deluxe” room; a step up from “superior” but down from “Grand Deluxe” and the various levels of suites offered by the hotel. My rate was $375, although the posted rate in the closet was $545 to $750 and the hotel’s rate card lists the deluxe category as $650.
Aug 21st, 2000, 12:26 PM
#3
Guest
Posts: n/a
(Part 3 of 3)
The room was opulent. Dark wood for all of the built-ins; luxurious, silky brocades for the walls. The entertainment center held a 36-inch television and a CD and DVD player. There was a lengthy list of CDs and newly released films on DVDs available without charge from the front desk. These accoutrements, however, were just the warm-up for the bathroom. Green and tan marble was used tastefully; the shower stall (all marble, naturally) had the kind of pressure available that is usually associated with fire engine pumpers. Care for a good soak instead? The six-foot tub was a full three feet deep, with one of those nifty wire baskets to hold your book or newspaper. There were two bottles of a premium bath gel to ensure that those who wanted bubbles got all they needed.
The little touches were everywhere: the “View of New-York and Brooklyn” print was the real thing, not a 1999 offset reproduction. There was ice in the ice bucket, a robe was laid out, and a down comforter awaited me when I retired. The Sony CD radio was tuned to WQXR, a classical station. There was not a fluorescent light anywhere to be seen.
In the morning, I breakfasted on an open-air colonnade thirty feet above Wall Street, those magnificent Corinthian columns all around me. By 7:30, the time I had to leave, the dining area was filling up with men and women in power suits preparing for power breakfasts. The Regent has already found its niche.
Nitpicks (nothing’s perfect): despite a full-page, seven-step instruction sheet, I was unable to set that Sony CD radio to awaken me. Fortunately, the hotel operator provided a back-up service. A connection to the touted high-speed Internet service that was listed in the services directory was nowhere to be found, and even the hotel operator eventually conceded it must not be available in all rooms.
Conclusion: Staying on Wall Street is not for the average tourist. There’s nothing to do after dark, and it’s a long and expensive cab ride to the attractions of Midtown. But for sheer comfort and enjoyment, the Regent comes close to perfection.
The room was opulent. Dark wood for all of the built-ins; luxurious, silky brocades for the walls. The entertainment center held a 36-inch television and a CD and DVD player. There was a lengthy list of CDs and newly released films on DVDs available without charge from the front desk. These accoutrements, however, were just the warm-up for the bathroom. Green and tan marble was used tastefully; the shower stall (all marble, naturally) had the kind of pressure available that is usually associated with fire engine pumpers. Care for a good soak instead? The six-foot tub was a full three feet deep, with one of those nifty wire baskets to hold your book or newspaper. There were two bottles of a premium bath gel to ensure that those who wanted bubbles got all they needed.
The little touches were everywhere: the “View of New-York and Brooklyn” print was the real thing, not a 1999 offset reproduction. There was ice in the ice bucket, a robe was laid out, and a down comforter awaited me when I retired. The Sony CD radio was tuned to WQXR, a classical station. There was not a fluorescent light anywhere to be seen.
In the morning, I breakfasted on an open-air colonnade thirty feet above Wall Street, those magnificent Corinthian columns all around me. By 7:30, the time I had to leave, the dining area was filling up with men and women in power suits preparing for power breakfasts. The Regent has already found its niche.
Nitpicks (nothing’s perfect): despite a full-page, seven-step instruction sheet, I was unable to set that Sony CD radio to awaken me. Fortunately, the hotel operator provided a back-up service. A connection to the touted high-speed Internet service that was listed in the services directory was nowhere to be found, and even the hotel operator eventually conceded it must not be available in all rooms.
Conclusion: Staying on Wall Street is not for the average tourist. There’s nothing to do after dark, and it’s a long and expensive cab ride to the attractions of Midtown. But for sheer comfort and enjoyment, the Regent comes close to perfection.
Aug 27th, 2000, 07:29 AM
#5
Guest
Posts: n/a
Hi Neal, Thanks for the report. I am just back from a week's work in NY and was booked into the Grand Hyatt, too. I could not agree with you more on the sorry state of this property. My room was tiny and unclean. The bath was tiny and inadequet. Housekeeping pulled the plug out of my tub and I could never get it to hold water again the entire week. The bath lighting was appalling. I couldn't believe there was no minibar, only one phone and it nowhere near the bed, and not one slip of scratch paper or a pen in the room. Neither the ice machine or the soda machine worked during my stay. I called the hotel before arrival and spoke with someone at the front desk. I was told that the rooms had coffeemakers (so I didn't bring mine)- they don't. I was told the hotel had a pool and a spa (so I brought a swimsuit) - it doesn't. I was told that the rooms did NOT have hairdriers (so I hauled mine along) - they do. It appears that the staff never actually tours the rooms and that accuracy isn't a high priority when giving out information. My other peeve was room service (although this isn't particular to just the Grand Hyatt). My $16 breakfast had a $3 per person "delivery fee" added, plus an automatic 15% gratuity added and THEN there's was a line for "tip". If I've already been forced to add on nearly 30%, should I feel obligated to bump in another 15-20% tip? Somehow nearly 50% in gratuity seems a bit much.
By the way, I stayed at The Time hotel on 49th (between 8th and Broadway) two weeks ago and it was divine. Very small but loaded with amenities and a staff that bends over backwards to please. This was one of the quietest rooms I've ever had in NY and the use of space is nothing short of amazing. At $149 (booked through a consolidator), I would definately stay there again. Thanks for your report. Tonna
By the way, I stayed at The Time hotel on 49th (between 8th and Broadway) two weeks ago and it was divine. Very small but loaded with amenities and a staff that bends over backwards to please. This was one of the quietest rooms I've ever had in NY and the use of space is nothing short of amazing. At $149 (booked through a consolidator), I would definately stay there again. Thanks for your report. Tonna
