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Minimalist Elegance
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Downtown's
boutique hotel opens amid hospitality boom.
By Peter Downs
It is one of the newest signs that downtown St. Louis is undergoing
a rebirth: the opening late last year of the WS on Washington, downtown's
first boutique hotel.
And as downtown attracts more residents and independent retailers,
more such hotels will likely follow, says Michael Barnett, past
president and current chairman of the St. Louis Area Hotel Association.
Downtown St. Louis has seen several new hotels open or begin construction
in the last two years: a Drury Inn in the old Fur Exchange and Jefferson
buildings, a Westin in part of the historic Cupples Station warehouse
complex, and a Sheraton in a former Edison Brothers warehouse. The
Ramada Inn on Broadway was gutted and stripped to its concrete frame,
and is being rebuilt as a Hampton Suites. The Renaissance Grand,
a new convention center hotel that will incorporate the old Statler
Hotel, is under construction, and the nearby Lennox Hotel is undergoing
renovation to a Renaissance Suites as part of the convention complex,
after sitting empty for many years. And it is widely expected that
developer Don Breckenridge will announce this month an agreement
to develop a hotel in the historic and largely vacant Arcade Building.
So, what makes a boutique hotel different?
Boutique hotels often are described as "quirky little hotels" or
small luxury hotels with exotic or intimate touches.
Barnett says a boutique hotel is "an independent hotel--there are
probably less than a handful under that name--less than 125 to 150
rooms. The more intimate ones are less than 100. It usually has
a very good dining room and a full-fledged concierge staff, and
usually has either a spa, a full-time masseuse, a workout area,
or an indoor or outdoor pool."
Above:
Mandarin Bay, featuring Intercontinental cuisine with an Asian
flair, is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Located in the main
lobby of the WS on Washington, it is independently operated by Max
Taouil.
The classic boutique hotels in San Francisco "were essentially very
good restaurants with a few hotel rooms attached," he adds.
Until recently, the Danielle and the Seven Gables Inn, both in Clayton,
were this metropolitan area's only boutique hotels. "The Danielle
is truly boutique and the Seven Gables Inn is distinctive. It only
has about 38 rooms and you can barely get your luggage through the
door, but you go there for its unique flavor and because it is in
Clayton," Barnett says. "We don't really have anything else."
The Clayton on the Park, which opened in late 2000, had aspirations
to become another such hotel. It was built with a boutique concept.
It has only 98 suites "and it has very much a feeling of a W type
hotel," Barnett says. W is the boutique division started recently
by Starwood Hotels and Resorts, the mammoth hospitality corporation
that also owns Westin and Sheraton hotels.
"The missing component that really took away from that complex doing
what it needed to do financially is that we did not have a very
unique restaurant," says Barnett, who was general manager there.
"They are now developing that."
The WS on Washington
does have a very unique restaurant, Mandarin Bay. It is an even
smaller property than Clayton on the Park, with only 60 hotel suites,
another 18 suites are set aside for apartments. Every suite comes
with a full kitchen outfitted with stove, oven, microwave oven,
dishwasher and refrigerator/freezer, and equipped with utensils
and pots and pans. Every suite also has an extra large bathroom
containing an oversized jacuzzi tub. Other amenities include dual
phone lines, Internet service and satellite TV.
The WS has three types of suites, ranging in size from the 750-square-foot
deluxe suite to the 1,500-square-foot two-bedroom suite. The latter
comes with one-and-a-half baths.
Above:
Conducting business away from home, the WS on Washington's 78
over-sized suites all offer high-speed Internet access, 24-hour
technical support and dual line speaker phones with a private direct
dial line to each room.
The other central feature of a boutique hotel-a day spa-is under
construction and slated for opening in March. The 18,000-square-foot
spa at the WS will include a fitness center, tanning facilities
and a full-time masseuse.
The small size of boutique hotels means that employees get to know
guests quickly, and vice versa.
"We meet every guest," April Risk, the general manager of the WS
on Washington says of herself and her sales director, Jay Hart.
"We save a history of every guest. We'll send them birthday cards
on their birthdays, and we note their preferences, like do they
want a bottle of Evian or champagne in their rooms, or is there
something they want that we don't normally have. We never say 'no.'
We go out and get it."
Combine that level of intimate service with excellent dining facilities
and the small physical space of such hotels-there are no longer
corridors to walk through to find your room-and it is clear why
boutique hotels have a reputation for feeling safer than their chain
cousins.
Another part of the charm of boutique hotels is their individuality.
"They are often geographically specific in their interior packages,"
Barnett says. "A hotel in New Orleans will be very New Orleans,
one in San Francisco is very San Francisco, so that when you walk
into one it is not like walking into any other one, not like a Salt
Lake City Marriott and a Dallas Marriott are the same."
That individuality, even idiosyncrasy, of boutique hotels helps
distinguish them from chain luxury hotels in renovated buildings.
The new Sheraton inside the former Edison Bros. warehouse in downtown
St. Louis is often cited for the huge skylit atrium that was cut
through eight concrete floors and unique adaptive reuse of the structure,
"but when you go in it, it is very much a Sheraton," Barnett says.
The WS on Washington isn't outfitted in a "St. Louis style," but
it does have a style that is unique in St. Louis. The hotel's biggest
idiosyncrasy, Risk says, "is definitely the decor. We brought a
South Beach Miami decor to St. Louis, beginning with the music as
you walk through the door [and continuing through] the food and
the furnishings. Everything is white. It is crisp and clean."
Actually, everything isn't white. Carpets, countertops, and some
of the wall paint is a light gray. You find marble or velvet curtains
in the decor. You will find light-colored woods in the lobby floor,
desks, and entertainment centers, and you'll find aluminum. Everything
is very spare and light.
It is minimalist, however. The lack of clutter in the decorating
reflects the absence of clutter in the hotel space. Neither the
lobby nor the rooms are filled with things. They are spacious, with
lots of floor space and a minimum of furniture so one can walk without
negotiating obstacles.
The main nod to St. Louis is in the artwork: photographic prints
of St. Louis landmarks by local artist John van Ess.
Barnett, for one, hopes to see more boutique hotels open up in downtown
St. Louis. As residential redevelopment moves south from Washington
Avenue, and retail development fills in, he believes it will happen.
Why does it matter? The short answer is that while large hotels
cater to a mass market and large events, a boutique hotel is cachet,
a place of quality and distinction in a mixed-use downtown.
Peter Downs is a free-lance writer and editor of Construction
News & Review.
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