NYC Four Seasons to reopen after 4-year feud as ‘Beanie Babies’ tycoon Ty Warner OKs plan to turn 50 rooms into apartments: source
The long-shuttered Four Seasons Hotel in New York will finally reopen in September after an epic, four-year battle with reclusive billionaire Beanie Babies tycoon Ty Warner – with the impasse likely broken by converting some rooms into residential units, The Post has learned.
A source with knowledge of the negotiations told The Post that up to 50 of the 368 rooms at the iconic property at 57 E. 57th St. – once known as the most expensive hotel in New York City – will be sold off as apartments.
The new units “would stabilize the operating costs with full-time residents paying hefty maintenance fees,” the source said.
It’s not clear whether the famous Ty Warner Penthouse on the 52nd floor – which has 360-degree views of the city, four balconies and costs $50,000 a night when it was rented out – will be put up for sale.
Reps for Warner and the Four Seasons did not comment.
The hotel has been closed since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and has been undergoing renovations for the past few years, according to its website, but there was little evidence that substantial work was going on, according to sources close to the property.
It remained shut long after the Big Apple reopened as the Toronto-based hotel management company and Ty Warner Hotels & Resorts remained locked in fierce negotiations and protracted arbitration proceedings over fees and operating costs, sources told The Post.
Those privy to the heated talks said Warner was outraged by the fees Four Seasons assessed to maintain a high level of service. Warner — who bought the prime property for $275 million in 1999, six years after it first opened — argued that his fees should be tied to the hotel’s profitability.
Last week, however, Four Seasons quietly announced on its web site that it had “completed agreements” with plans to reopen the property in September 2024.
Warner and Four Seasons also apparently buried the hatchet over a sister property, the Biltmore Santa Barbara – that had been closed since the pandemic. The agreement calls for that hotel to reopen in the Spring of 2025, according to the four-sentence press release.
“For more than three decades, both iconic properties have hosted discerning travelers and locals alike, and Ty Warner’s team and Four Seasons look forward to welcoming guests back to these celebrated properties,” the release said.
A tentative agreement reached last year to reopen the hotel fell apart as the powerful hotel union — the New York Hotel and Gaming Trades Council — joined the complicated web of talks, as The Post reported exclusively.
The union wanted furloughed workers to regain their jobs at the prestigious hotel, even if some of them had landed positions elsewhere.
“At this point, only an agreement with the union is still required to open Four Seasons New York, which I’m optimistic will be coming soon,” Warner, the founder of Beanie Babies, told The Post in an interview last August.
Union reps did not return calls for comment.
The Four Seasons New York Downtown already has private residences as do other properties in Boston, Baltimore, Minneapolis and San Francisco, according to the company’s website.
