NEW ORLEANS – The Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences New Orleans isn’t scheduled to open until May, but it’s already setting real estate records.
“We’ve sold the most real estate of any project in the city,” said David Seerman, sales director for Carpenter & Co., the Boston-based master developer that’s collaborating with Woodward Interests on the $530 million project. Crews are transforming the former World Trade Center, built in 1967 and designed by Edward Durell Stone (known for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.)
“When these sales hit the public record, you’re going to see prices per square foot that have far exceeded what had been sold prior,” he said. “It’s transformative.”
In fact, the sale of one of the Four Seasons penthouses for a reported $13 million to Donald T. “Boysie” Bollinger, former CEO of Bollinger Shipyards, has already made headlines. Bollinger’s new home will be in the 30th floor space formerly occupied by the World Trade Center’s Plimsoll Club. It will retain the club’s original fireplace.
“We’re building out a just a spectacular penthouse,” said Seerman. “And we’ve also sold the Plimsoll Club ballroom, which will also be a private penthouse. They have 16-foot ceilings, 12 feet of glass all the way around about 4,000 square feet – and you could never replicate that again in the city.”
The Four Seasons project is running on schedule.
There are roughly 700 construction workers on site and the hotel expects to employ about 400 full-time employees when it’s up and running. (Click here for information about available jobs.) It will have 341 rooms and suites, a 75-foot pool deck, two signature restaurants, multiple bars, a high-end fitness center and what Seerman says will be the largest spa in New Orleans.
The 81 private residences, meanwhile, start on the 19th floor and continue up to the 28th floor.
“It will be the most elevated living you have in the city, arguably the best views in the city,” said Seerman. “And we’ll be the first fully serviced and branded residences ever in New Orleans. The top three floors – twenty-nine, thirty and thirty-one – will have ‘raw space’ penthouses, so we have folks coming in and working with us to do unbelievable build outs of these very prominent properties.”
Seerman hopes the project will help the city’s post-COVID revival by generating tax revenues and bringing big spenders to town.
“We’re really proud that we’re going to be growing the market,” he said. “We didn’t come here to compete with the local hotels. We want to attract groups, visitors and high-net-worth people to invest in New Orleans and spend a lot of money.”
Locals, of course, have their priorities straight:
“New Orleans being a food town, the first question I get is, ‘Who are your chefs? What are your restaurant concepts?’ So I tell them we recently signed Alon Shaya to run our lobby, signature restaurant. And then we just announced last week that we signed Donald Link to run our Riverview fifth floor restaurant.”
The hotel is already taking group reservations but likely won’t start taking reservations for individuals until this spring.
“What’s exciting is we’re seeing a lot of groups that have never booked in New Orleans before,” said Seerman. “But I think because of the brand, they want to come down.”
