Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Nearly a decade after it shut for an extensive renovation, people will once again be sleeping at the Waldorf Astoria. While the grand Art Deco hotel remains very much under renovation, condo closings have started, according to Douglas Elliman, which is handling sales. “We have contracts signed on studio residences to our larger, expansive residences, with nearly an equal split of buyers locally from New York City, the domestic United States, and internationally,” Loretta Shanahan, senior director of sales at Waldorf Astoria Residences New York, wrote in a statement. The three closings so far range from a $1.8 million studio to a $3 million one-bedroom with two going for slightly under the asking and one for slightly over. Many other units are in contract and will likely start closing soon.
The landmarked lobby of the hotel, with the restored clock, will open later later this year.
It’s been a lengthy, extraordinarily expensive renovation — the developer has confirmed that it’s in the billions but won’t specify further — with leadership changes, COVID delays, and the complications of updating and converting an enormous, landmarked property dragging out the process. The storied midtown hotel, purchased from Hilton Worldwide Holdings by China’s Anbang Insurance Group for $1.95 billion in 2015, closed down two years later for a condo conversion and massive overhaul. The tower was to e made over into 375 condos with 375 hotel rooms below, and the landmarked public spaces — Peacock Alley, the ballroom, the lobby, the entrances off Park and Lexington — meticulously renovated by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. After Anbang’s chairman was sentenced and jailed for financial crimes in 2018, the Chinese government took control of Anbang through a new entity it created, the Dajia Insurance Group Co. The rotating executives who led the project after his departure contributed to delays and cost overruns, according to previous reporting by The Wall Street Journal, issues that were compounded when COVID hit.
A glimpse of the now completed residential lobby.
Photo: Alejandro Leon
But the project is finally nearing completion. In December, when I took a tour, craftspeople were working on the finishing touches of the Grand Ballroom, Peacock Alley and the Park Avenue lobby with its famous clock (renovated to exacting standards involving the analysis of historical paint chips), and the hotel portion, which was slated to open in spring 2025, is now accepting reservations starting in September 2025 (with a “soft opening” slated for the spring, according to the development team). Prices start at $1,500 a night, which is high even for New York.
One of the residential units, with design by Josh Greene.
Photo: Colin Miller
But the closings, if nothing else, prove that the project is sufficiently complete for buyers to move into their units, even if there’s still scaffolding and plenty of hard-hat zones. Condos currently on the market range from a $1.87 million studio to an $18.75 million four-bedroom with interiors by Jean-Louis Deniot. They aren’t as extravagant as some of the recent hotel condos that have hit the market — prices are in the mid-$4,000s per square foot, a fair amount less than the top-of-the-line condos at, say, the Aman, which traded in the high $6,000s — but have solid luxury features like herringbone floors, Gagganeau appliances, marble baths, and “concierge closets” by the front door — i.e., little cabinets that can be opened from the outside and inside, so that items need not be left undecorously on the doormat.