By: Don Driggers
As hotels began to reopen as Covid-19 restrictions eased and New York City and the tourism industry returned to normal, one luxury hotel conspicuously remained closed. The opulent Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown Manhattan was expected to return to business as other similar properties, such as The Mandarin Oriental and The Ritz-Carlton, did.
Lisa Fickenscher of The New York Post writes the luxury icon designed by architect I.M. Pei at 57 East 57th St. — whose lavish Ty Warner penthouse suite was charging $50,000 a night before the hotel was shuttered in March 2020 –has come to resemble an abandoned building.
Neighbors are skeptical of a claim on the Four Seasons website that the Midtown Manhattan landmark is “temporarily closed as it is undergoing substantial infrastructure and maintenance work that is expected to last well into 2022” — language that has been in place since last fall, even as the hotel told union reps it was targeting a spring 2022 reopening says the New York Post in an exclusive report.
Sources told The New York Post that the hotel has been held hostage by an epic contract dispute between the Four Seasons management company and Ty Warner, the reclusive toy tycoon who owns the posh high-rise. At issue is the fact that the hotel has been losing money for years — even before the pandemic struck, according to property records.
“It’s clear that Four Seasons and Ty Warner don’t see eye-to-eye on very much, which makes it difficult to reach an agreement and move forward,” said another source with knowledge of the situation. “It’s in limbo…he’s not selling the building,” another hotel insider said of Warner, estimating it would be three to four years before the hotel opens. “He’s not a distressed owner and Four Seasons has a management agreement, and they are at war.”
Warner bought the property in 1999 for $275 million — just seven years after the hotel opened at a reported $475 million cost to its developers. At the time, the hotel was reportedly generating $30 million a year in operating income. But business has had a bumpy road since, several industry insiders tell The New York Post.
According to city records, the Four Seasons lost money in 2018 and 2019. Many Big Apple luxury hotels saw hits to their profits during the years before the pandemic amid rising wages and increased competition from new hotels, according to Sean Hennessey, a professor at New York University’s Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality.
“There are few things that make an owner more upset than when the property is not earning any profits yet the manager is being paid handsomely,” Hennessy said.
According to Wikipedia, H. Ty Warner (born September 3, 1944) is an American billionaire toy manufacturer, businessman, and former actor. He is the CEO, sole owner and founder of Ty Inc. which manufactures and distributes stuffed toys, including Beanie Babies and other lines. He is also the owner of Four Seasons Hotel New York, which he bought with profits earned selling Beanie Babies during a fad in the late 1990s. In 2020, he was No. 359 on the Forbes400 list of the richest people in America, with a net worth of US$2.3 billion.
