Despite many false starts and years of delays, it's looking like the repeatedly delayed Chetrit Group hotels at Trinity Auditorium/Embassy Hotel and Hotel Clark in Downtown will actually open soon. Broker/blogger Brigham Yen hears that the hotels expected to open by spring 2016 and that they'll be operated by Argentina-based Fën Hotels. The Trinity Auditorium near Grand and Ninth will become the Esplendor Trinity, under Fën's Esplendor brand, while the Historic Core's Hotel Clark over at Hill and Fourth will reopen as the Dazzler Clark, a branch of Fën's Dazzler brand.
Fën's website says the Esplendor is "a new concept in boutique hotels" that "promise a unique mix of design, the avant-garde and new discoveries." The Esplendor will be taking up in the Trinity Auditorium, a lovely eight-story structure dating back to 1914; it's the building where the LA Philharmonic played its premiere concert in 1919. As a hotel, it will have 183 guest rooms and a street-level restaurant with private garden. The Trinity's central light well has been redone with a green wall (it looks like astroturf) and red window awnings. Yen hears from "sources onsite" that the Esplendor Trinity will open by April 2016.
Over by Grand Central Market, the 11-story Dazzler Clark will have 347 rooms and a "trendier and slightly younger feel" than the Trinity, Yen says. (Fën describes the brand as being "the perfect synthesis between a functional aesthetic, comfortable spaces, and quality service," which isn't very helpful.) The 1912 building has a large vertical neon sign along Hill Street that will be lit up once the hotel's open, which is expected to happen in either January or February 2016.
Fën operates more than 20 hotels, predominantly in South America, but has one completed (Dazzler Brooklyn) and one in-progress (Esplendor Brooklyn) in New York, as well as one in Florida.
· Fën Hotels Flag Chosen for Trinity and Clark in Downtown LA [BY]
· DTLA's Super-Delayed Clark and Embassy Hotels Finally, Actually Moving Forward [Curbed LA]