Naomi Campbell's Ex Russian Boyfriend Brings a (Yawn) Aman Hotel to Manhattan. And It's Yours for Only $3,200 a Night!
Plus, New York Mayor Eric Adams, Man of the People, Parties There Like it's 1999!
In the latest indication that Manhattan may indeed be just a dysfunctional island off the coast of America rather than really a part of it, the new Aman New York hotel, located in the refurbished Crown Building at 57th and Fifth, is offering rooms starting at a whopping $3,200 a night. No less a figure than New York Mayor Eric Adams attended the opening party last month (arrived late, stayed late…) but once the ribbon-cutting hoopla subsides, New Yorkers will be left to decide for themselves what the arrival of a mega-luxury hotel like this in the heart of Manhattan actually means. The New York Post’s Steve Cuozzo included the hotel in a piece headlined “New York’s new private club craze is a cancer on the city”, whereas the New York Times politely asked , “Will it work?” (maybe they’re holding out for an ad buy).
Mr. Cuozzo takes aim at the private club trend — love it or loathe it — but with regard to the new uber-luxury tower what rattles him is that “unlike at any other hotel in the city, Aman’s restaurant, jazz club, lounges and even the lobby are accessible only to room guests who pay $3,200-and-up a night or buy a $200,000 club membership.” He observed that “the hotel’s doormen are dressed like Secret Service agents and guard the velvet rope on East 57th Street like Fort Knox, chasing would-be explorers away with a sneer.”
No one ever accused midtown Manhattan of exuding the charm of a hilltop village in Tuscany and tourists are free to spend their money in the city as they see fit. The very fact that Aman is charging thousands of dollars for a short spell in one of the property’s 83 suites is a healthy sign that New York has moved past the pandemic period during which hotels grand and less grand stood virtually empty. But from the looks of Aman’s “newest island destination” as they call it, the style and decor strike this correspondent as more anodyne than exhilarating.
Though no interior designer am I, with some authority on this matter do I speak. That is not only because in a past life I toured hundreds of New York City hotels to research colorful guidebooks published by Rupert Murdoch, but because I also toured the Aman New York’s sister property in Greece, the Amanzoe resort at Porto Heli. The torpor and sprawl of the property were inconsistent with the local Greek style and scale. Security on the sea-view property was in this correspondent’s estimation unusually tight, particularly for a rural environment, making the hotel feel more like a hushed compound for a very moneyed elite than a typical, family-friendly Mediterranean resort.
Is serenity subjective? Apparently: “Manhattan’s iconic Crown Building begins its next chapter as an urban Aman sanctuary, bringing the peace promised by the brand's Sanskrit-derived name to the heart of the western world.” That is certainly ambitious stuff. But what I like about Manhattan is that it is neither serene nor a sanctuary. It is on the best of days an irresistible madhouse. Hotelier Ian Schrager gets this, and leverages the city’s energy to fantastic effect. And for $319 plus tax I could stay at his Public hotel downtown with enough dough left over to take my editor out for lunch somewhere nice uptown.
But people with different backgrounds bring different things to the New York table. Mr. Schrager, whom I have had the pleasure of interviewing, comes from Brooklyn. The man behind Aman New York is Mr. Vladisav Doronin, who unlike Mr. Schrager is not the chatty type. Born in Leningrad, Mr. Doronin renounced his Soviet citizenship decades ago but was still christened one of the “kings of Russian real estate” by Forbes in 2014. His Aman Group is based in that Alpine bastion of transparent business practices, Switzerland.
Mr. Doronin dated Naomi Campbell from 2008 until 2013. In 2011, Ms. Campbell, not normally acclaimed for her journalistic endeavors, interviewed Vladimir Putin — an unlikely sitdown that prompted The Guardian newspaper to quip, “In addition to keeping in shape, Putin and Campbell also share an interest in Russian oligarchs — the supermodel has been dating the billionaire Vladislav Doronin for more than two years.” More recently, as The New York Times reported, Mr. Doronin did not exactly enthuse over a Colorado newspaper’s characterization of him as an oligarch.
In Aspen too it seems, Mr. Doronin has luxury hotel plans afoot, and his Amangiri resort in Utah already has its acolytes, undeterred by or perhaps turned on by its stratospheric room rates. But as everybody knows, you are nobody in the hotel business until you have a hotel in New York. That is why the kind of hotel that opens in the greatest city in the world, is important. As is what it represents.
Bottom line: You can spend $3,200 to stay at Aman New York. But you can sleep in a plastic chair at Port Authority for free. Probably meet more interesting people too.