Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group, which opened the first property under its 1 Hotels brand in Miami Beach March, has opened New York’s first property under the eco-luxe badge in midtown Manhattan.
1 Hotel Central Park’s environmental emphasis includes a three-story-high exterior wall covered in English ivy and a lobby with hanging bonsai-like plants.
The hotel, which has 229 rooms and is located a block south of Central Park, uses beams reclaimed from old barns in its guestrooms, while small chalkboards are put by guests’ bedside in order to reduce paper use.
Other environmental touches include a fitness center called the Field House that overlooks West 58th Street and has a floor made of reclaimed wood from the University of Wisconsin’s old basketball court.
The hotel also offers shuttles within a 15-block radius via a Tesla Model S electric luxury sedan, and uses low-flow plumbing fixtures and eco-friendly cleaning materials. The hotel's restaurant, Jams by chef Jonathan Waxman, is due to open later this month.
Walk-in showers were designed to look like greenhouses.
Sternlicht, who launched the W lifestyle brand when he was CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, hatched the 1 Hotels brand in 2006, with plans at the time to debut the badge in Seattle two years later. In 2007, Sternlicht also unveiled the Baccarat ultra-luxury hotel brand.
But those plans were scuttled by the recession. As a result, the 1 Hotels brand didn’t make its global debut until March, the same month the world’s first Baccarat Hotel & Residences opened about six blocks from 1 Hotel Central Park.
A 1 Hotels property is scheduled to open next to Brooklyn Bridge Park next year.
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