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Westin William Penn sold
Thursday, January 18, 2001 By Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Texas-based Omni Hotels Corp. has agreed to purchase the Westin William Penn, a 595-room Downtown hotel built in the early 1900s by industrialist Henry Clay Frick.
The hotel, which is expected to change hands Jan. 31, will be renamed the Omni William Penn Hotel. As part of the sale, Omni intends to spend more than $20 million on renovations to the lobby, guest rooms and some of the hotel's mechanical systems.
Omni and Atlanta-based Lodgian Inc., the current owner, agreed to the terms yesterday and notified hotel employees. Mike Deitemeyer, Omni's chief operating officer, confirmed the deal yesterday, but he would not discuss the terms. Omni, he said, intends to keep the hotel's employees.
A official announcement about the sale is expected today.
Omni's deal to purchase Downtown's most historic hotel comes amid an expansion of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and several changes to Pittsburgh's hotel market.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., based in Atlanta, is considering a new upscale hotel near Eighth Street and Fort Duquesne Boulevard, two blocks from the convention center. At Sixth Street and Fort Duquesne Boulevard, a Denver development company is spending $44 million on the transformation of the Fulton Building into a Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel.
Next to the convention center, Starwood Hotels & Resorts is taking over management of the Doubletree Hotel Pittsburgh, which today will be officially renamed The Westin Convention Center, Pittsburgh.
The Doubletree's owner, Forest City Commercial Group of Cleveland, wants to use the Westin name because it hopes the upscale brand will attract more conventioneers to the 618-room property. Also, Forest City hopes to get approval for a 500-room hotel expansion. That bid, which Forest City has submitted to the city and Allegheny County, is competing with a bid from Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels, which wants to build a 750-room hotel near the convention center.
Both proposals would require public subsidies, but only one will get the nod. A decision is expected soon.
For Omni, which owns 41 hotels nationwide, the purchase of the Westin William Penn gives the Irving, Texas-based company its first Pittsburgh property. In the last few years, it has been looking for and buying historic hotels in major U.S. cities, including Boston, where it spent $60 million renovating the well-known Parker House, and Washington, D.C., where it spent $80 million on renovations to a hotel there.
Now, Omni wants to do the same kind of work at the Westin William Penn, Pittsburgh's third-largest hotel.
"We saw the William Penn as a prized asset in Pittsburgh and a hotel with a great past," Deitemeyer said.
When Frick built the hotel early in the 20th century, he wanted it to be one of the best in the country. It was designed and built in two stages, the first in 1914-1916.
An addition was made in 1928-1929.
Nearly the entire building was built with local products or supplied by Pittsburgh firms.
Dominating the first floor is the Palm Court lobby, a 25-foot-tall space flanked by seven arches on each side.
The ceiling is set with 65 octagonal coffers said to have been adapted from the Palace of Fontainebleau and embossed with alternating "WP" mono. Another popular part of the hotel is its 17th-floor Art Deco ballroom.
The last changes to the hotel were made in 1998, when Lodgian completed work on a three-year, $25 million renovation that included a refurbishing of the six meetings rooms on the conference level. Each of the rooms received new carpeting, draperies, wallpaper, lighting, temperature controls -- and new names.
The names reflect this region's industrial history: Frick, Heinz, Laughlin, Oliver, Phipps and Vandergrift.
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