Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Hospitality |
Founded | 1999 |
Founder | Alex Calderwood Wade Weigel Doug Herrick |
Headquarters | |
Number of locations | 10 |
Key people |
|
Website | www |
Ace Hotel is a chain of hotels headquartered in Los Angeles and New York City. Founded in 1999 in Seattle, it operates hotels primarily in the United States, with locations in Portland, Oregon; Brooklyn, New York City; Palm Springs, California; Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; Kyoto, Japan; Toronto, Canada; Sydney, Australia; and Panama City, Panama.
In 1999, the first Ace Hotel was opened. Friends Alex Calderwood, Wade Weigel, and Doug Herrick purchased and transformed a Seattle halfway house into an affordable hotel that would appeal to the creative class. Calderwood and Weigel had previously founded Rudy's, a reinvigorated traditional barbershop concept they started in Seattle, which eventually expanded to more than a dozen locations, along with an experiential marketing company known as Neverstop, and an audiovisual arts platform known as ARO.Space with Pearl Jam co-founder Stone Gossard and Kung Faux creator Mic Neumann, who is credited for bringing in such artists as Kaws and Shepard Fairey to decorate the walls of various Rudy's and Ace Hotel locations. [1]
In 2006, Jack Barron and Tungsten Partners founder Michael Bisordi joined as owners. The group then opened a second hotel in Portland, Oregon followed by properties in Palm Springs, California and New York City in 2009. [2]
In 2011, Ace Hotel collaborated with Uslu Airlines to create a nail polish sold exclusively in the hotels' mini-bars.[ citation needed ]
In 2013, an Ace Hotel opened in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London, [3] where Calderwood had defined a goal of opening a new Ace Hotel every "one to two years", before his untimely death at age 47 on November 16, 2013. [4]
In 2014, a downtown Los Angeles location of the Ace Hotel opened in a former theatre, followed by Ace Hotel locations in Pittsburgh in 2015, New Orleans in 2016, and Chicago in 2017.[ citation needed ]
In 2020, an Ace Hotel location opened in Kyoto, Japan that was designed by Kengo Kuma. [5] In September 2020, it was announced that Ace Hotel London Shoreditch would not reopen after being closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. [6]
In 2021, Ace Hotel opened locations in Brooklyn, New York; Toronto, Canada and Sydney, Australia.[ citation needed ]
In 2022, Ace Hotel filed for arbitration against David Paz's Omnia Group and was awarded $10.4 million after alleging the property owner of a Manhattan location managed by the Ace Hotel Group hurt the brand and future earnings by taking a deal with the city of New York to house the homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic. [7]
In 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Portland, Oregon-based hospitality firm, Sortis Holdings, had reached an agreement to acquire the Ace Hotel Group brand and its hotel management company for $85 million in an all cash transaction. [8]
According to Calderwood, the style and furnishing of each Ace property is designed to reflect its location, with an eye towards re-imagining properties that are "challenged." [9]
Former locations:
The 2011 episode "Blunderbuss" of the sketch comedy series Portlandia had a sketch set at the "Deuce Hotel", where the obnoxiously hip staff hand out complimentary turntables and typewriters to all guests; [20] it was a parody specifically of Ace Hotel Portland. [21]
On her song Ace, rapper Noname talks about being at Ace Hotel in London. [22]
Bon Iver makes a reference to the Ace Hotel Los Angeles in the song "33 "GOD"" on the album 22, A Million.[ citation needed ]
Hard Rock Cafe, Inc. is a chain of theme bar-restaurants, memorabilia shops, casinos and museums founded in 1971 by Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton in London. In 1979, the cafe began covering its walls with rock and roll memorabilia, a tradition which expanded to others in the chain. In 2007, Hard Rock Cafe International (USA), Inc. was sold to the Seminole Tribe of Florida and was headquartered in Orlando, Florida, until April 2018, when the corporate offices were relocated to Davie, Florida. As of July 2018, Hard Rock International has venues in 74 countries, including 172 bar or cafe-restaurants, 37 hotels, and four casinos.
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Rudy's Barbershop is a chain of barbershops founded in Seattle, Washington by Alex Calderwood, David Petersen and Wade Weigel in 1993, with locations primarily on the United States West Coast. Calderwood and Weigel would later go on to also co-found the Ace Hotel group in 1999. Rudy's Barbershops are known for their casual, retro-hip aesthetic and can be found at Ace Hotel locations in Seattle and New York City.
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Museum architecture has been of increasing importance over the centuries, especially more recently.
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