Loews Gets New Orleans Hotel

NEW YORK— Loews Hotels reports that it broke ground on July 16 for the $65 million, 285-room luxury Loews New Orleans Hotel. The new hotel will be the brand’s sixth new property in six years when it opens in the fall of 2003. Loews most recently opened the 1,000-room Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Orlando in June. The Loews Hotels New Orleans, which will sit in the city’s CBD, is a conversion of the former Lykes Building located at the corner of Poydras and South Peters Street.It will sit across the street from the Harrah’s New Orleans Jazz Casino. Similar to the conversion of the historical PSFS building into the 585-room Loews Philadelphia Hotel, which opened in April 2000, the Lykes Building will be completely rebuilt as the four-star, luxury Loews New Orleans with approximately 140 suites, an upscale restaurant, 14,000 square feet of meeting space, a health club and spa as well as on-site parking facilities. Interior design elements will be derived from a mixture of Creole, West Indies, Colonial French and the influence the Mississippi River had on the city, said Loews. Alexandra Champalimaud and Associates of New York has been selected as the interior design company. The architects, Lyons & Hudson of New Orleans in conjunction with Hewitt and Washington, another New Orleans firm, will incorporate the Piazza dItalia into the hotel design. The developers have budgeted in excess of $1 million for the rejuvenation and rebuilding of the Piazza dItalia, an award-winning Charles Moore-designed outdoor Romanesque-style Piazza originally created in 1978 on city land as a tribute to the contributions of the Italian community to the development of New Orleans. Construction begins this month with completion expected in Fall 2003. Loews Hotels will operate the hotel as part of a long-term management contract. The hotel will be owned by Piazza dItalia Hotel Associates, LLC, and Multi-Employer Development Partners L.P., a limited partnership of tax-exempt institutional investors. Mortgage financing will be provided by Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (West LB), a German bank with offices in New York City, together with the Hibernia National Bank of New Orleans. Brice Construction Company of New Orleans will serve as general contractor.