Fairmont Pittsburgh promises to take luxury to new level in city
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The lounge area of the fitness center in the Fairmont Hotel on Market Street in Downtown Pittsburgh. -
The office area in one of the rooms in the Fairmont Hotel.
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Luxury was still very much a work in progress Thursday at 510 Market St. Downtown.
Only days before the Fairmont Pittsburgh will make its long-awaited debut, construction workers scurried about, pounding, priming, tucking, tailoring and tuning the 185-room hotel, hopefully to the lofty standards associated with its famous name.
Despite the orange cones in the glass-wrapped ultra modern lobby and plenty of work left to be done elsewhere, Len Czarnecki, Fairmont general manager, was confident the hotel would be ready for prime time when it opens its doors Monday just before the sun rises.
"Oh, yes, absolutely. We will be ready on Monday the 29th," he said. "It comes together remarkably fast. We're obsessing over little details now, a little nick here, a ding there, get the lights right. So this is the fun stage we're in right now."
While the city has been in the midst of a hotel building boom, the opening of the Fairmont is perhaps unlike that of any other since the Renaissance Pittsburgh made its debut in the Fulton Building on Sixth Street in 2001.
"The Fairmont is synonymous with a very unusually high standard and it's recognized across the world as a luxury hotel brand," said Craig Davis, vice president of sales and marketing for tourism group VisitPittsburgh. "I think it adds credibility to our city to have the opportunity to have a Fairmont here."
The Fairmont will occupy floors 14 to 23 in the new Three PNC Plaza tower, rubbing shoulders with PNC bankers, condominium owners and lawyers for the Reed Smith law firm, which is headquartered in the building.
While some may see the Fairmont as on par with the Renaissance or the Omni William Penn Hotel on Grant Street, Mr. Czarnecki sees it filling a void in the market in terms of high-end accommodations.
"There's been a pent-up demand for a different option and a luxury option. If you look at the Fortune 500 companies that are here, the banking, the law firms, the biomedical, the robotics, you name it, Pittsburgh has it," he said.
The Fairmont's 185 rooms, including 20 suites, will range in price from $179 to $3,000 a night.
There also will be a state-of-the-art fitness center with a sauna and showers that will be free to guests, a 6,000-square-foot ballroom, a restaurant, and a bar named Andys, the kind of place where "Andy Warhol would meet Andrew Carnegie," Mr. Czarnecki said, in keeping with the hotel's art and industry theme.
The standard room probably would satisfy the most demanding industrialist or most persnickety artist. There are plush cotton robes for guests, a 14-inch thick pillow top mattress specially made for the Fairmont, a 42-inch flat-screen TV, floor to ceiling windows with views of Downtown or the Allegheny River and North Shore, and a "media panel" for DVD players, iPods, cell phones and assorted other gadgets.
First Published March 26, 2010 12:00 am
