The West Hollywood site that had been earmarked for a
luxury-boutique James Hotel will become the 1 Hotel West Hollywood -- but not before
first spending time as the Jeremy West Hollywood.
Starwood Capital Group, parent of the eco-luxe 1 Hotels
chainlet, has acquired
the nearly-completed West Hollywood site, on the corner of Sunset and La
Cienega boulevards. It said the hotel would open next month as the Jeremy West
Hollywood and be "transformed" into the 1 during the next year.
Starwood Capital's SH Group, which operates the three other
1 Hotel properties as well as New York's Baccarat Hotel, will operate the
Jeremy.
The 286-room Jeremy (or future 1) was designed by Skidmore,
Owings & Merrill and affords views of the Los Angeles basin, and it will
include 50 suites, two penthouses, a restaurant and a lobby bar. It is the
centerpiece of a mixed-use project that's considered the largest new
development since West Hollywood was incorporated in 1984. The project,
originally called Sunset Millennium, was approved by West Hollywood's city
council in 1999, but financing issues have delayed its launch.
CIM acquired the group of properties for the mixed-use site
in 2011 and began construction in 2013. Denihan Hospitality's James Hotels said
it would brand and operate the hotel the following year, but it exited the deal
earlier this summer, saying
that "the property owner has decided to sell the property, and as a
result, a different operator will run the hotel."
Starwood Capital didn't disclose how much it paid for the
hotel, though real estate blog the Real Deal,
citing people familiar with the process, pegged the sale price at almost $280
million, or almost $1 million per room.
"We can't wait to launch the Jeremy and later bring our
award-winning luxury sustainability focused brand to a city and state that
cares so much about the environment," Starwood Capital chairman Barry
Sternlicht said in a statement Thursday.
1 Hotels, which debuted in Miami in 2015 and now has
properties in Manhattan and Brooklyn, N.Y., said earlier this year that it
planned to add a hotel in California's Silicon Valley in 2019.