A first glimpse inside the soon-to-be remodeled Hotel Cecil reveals a light, bright lobby by Marmol Radziner.
The Los Angeles-based firm, which also has offices in San Francisco and New York, has signed on to handle the interiors of the hotel portion of the long-in-the-works project.
Renderings of Marmol Radziner’s plans were presented publicly for the first time last week to the city’s cultural heritage commission. John LoCascio of consulting firm Historic Resources Group told the board that renovations will include returning many features inside and outside of the hotel to the way they were in 1924, when the Cecil opened.
Under the plans, the hotel’s roof, the scene of a tragedy that inspired a season of American Horror Story, will be converted into amenity space for hotel guests.
Non-historic storefronts along Main Street will be removed, along with some of the hotel’s signs and its marquee. New storefronts made to match the original facades will be installed instead. The hotel’s blade signs and the large painted wall sign on the building’s south face are set to be restored and new entrance doors to the hotel will be installed.
The lobby’s interiors elements will be retained, Locascio said, though the marble flooring and finishes will be replaced with terrazzo.
When complete, the Cecil will feature 299 hotel rooms and 264 affordable units operated by Skid Row Housing Trust. The Cecil’s split use was determined by the city a decade ago, the owner’s representative Jodi Eilers told the commission, as part of a 2006 settlement the city made aimed at preserving inexpensive residential hotel units in Downtown.
The landmarked building’s 14 floors would be split vertically to serve both the low-income tenants and the hotel guests—essentially creating “two buildings in one,” Eilers said.
Residents of the 264 units operated by Skid Row Housing Trust would have a separate entrance to the building and have a separate elevator. Floors two through seven and half of the eighth floor would be for low-income residents, while the other half of the eighth floor up to the 14th would be used by the hotel.
Eilers said that construction on the Hotel Cecil is expected to begin in January.
The renovations have been a long time coming. The Cecil sold in 2014 to New York real estate developer Richard Born, who owns a vast portfolio of boutique hotels in New York, including the Bowery, the Maritime, the Ludlow, and the Greenwich.
The following year, Simon Baron Development entered a 99-year ground lease with the property owner (officially, 248 Haynes Hotel Associates, LLC) with plans to overhaul the building.
Simon Baron Development announced plans to renovate the building in 2016. The hotel became a city landmark the next year.
The improvements planned for the hotel would represent a major turnaround in the Cecil’s recent history. Though the hotel was originally aimed at business travelers, the Cecil opened just four years before the Great Depression began.
The drop-off in well-heeled guests was the beginning of a sustained decline for the Cecil and the surrounding neighborhood. The hotel’s reputation became linked to its infamous sometime residents, like Night Stalker Richard Ramirez. The Cecil’s eerie reputation was cemented in 2013, when a guest was found dead in a rooftop water cistern. (The death was ruled an accident.)
Whether the renovations can shake the Cecil’s decades-long reputation remains to be seen.
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