The Boston Park Plaza has been bought: It’s now a Hilton

Practically 70 years after legendary hotelier Conrad Hilton first staked his declare within the Again Bay with the acquisition of the Boston Park Plaza, the historic property is formally again below the Hilton model. 

The 1,060-room lodge not too long ago bought to Mexican lodge developer and Hilton franchisee Parks Hospitality Holdings for $370 million, or about $350,000 per room. Its earlier proprietor, Sunstone Lodge Traders Inc., acquired the Park Plaza in 2013 and oversaw a $100 million makeover that reinvigorated what was then an getting older lodge desperately in want of a facelift. 

The Park Plaza has modified fingers a number of occasions through the years, changing into the Statler Hilton following Conrad Hilton’s buy in 1954, then The Boston Park Plaza Lodge & Towers when the Saunders household took possession within the Nineteen Seventies.

Following its current sale, the lodge will now be often known as the Hilton Boston Park Plaza.

“We’re delighted to welcome again one in all our first Boston properties, Hilton Boston Park Plaza, to the Hilton household,” Danny Hughes, Hilton’s president of the Americas, stated in a Tuesday information launch. “The lodge’s distinctive location within the coronary heart of the town, coupled with the property’s pleasant service and considerate facilities, supply the proper homebase for each traveler and any event.” 

Maintaining the old-world allure

Opened in 1927 because the Statler Lodge, the Park Plaza was the biggest lodge in New England and the primary within the nation to supply in-room radios, The Boston Globe reported in 2015. Oozing opulence and old-school grandeur, the lodge was a favourite of the highly effective and the outstanding, from Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to stars Katherine Hepburn and Judy Garland. 

By the mid-2010s, nonetheless, the lodge had fallen to the underside of Tripadvisor’s Boston lodge rankings, descending right into a “lodge hell” of peeling wallpaper, cigarette-holed blankets, and defective air con, based on the Globe.

A 2016 renovation restored the lodge’s old-world allure and breathed new life into the property, which has since climbed again up the Tripadvisor rankings.

At the moment, the Park Plaza’s Grand Ballroom stays the usual of ornate magnificence — image balconies outlined in gold and chandeliers dripping with Baccarat crystals — however the lodge additionally gives visitors extra “non-traditional” venue choices like Avenue 34 and The Sq., which Hilton describes as “tasteful industrial stylish.” 

In a press launch asserting the current sale, nonetheless, Sunstone instructed that one other facelift is perhaps needed someday quickly.

“Based mostly on the timing of the prior renovation, the Firm anticipates that the Lodge would require vital further funding to keep up its aggressive place and maintain its present degree of earnings,” Sunstone stated final week. 

Neither Hilton nor Parks Hospitality Holdings have indicated whether or not one other makeover is within the playing cards for the Park Plaza, although Hilton Lodges & Resorts model chief Leonard Gooz stated in an announcement that the chain is worked up to welcome guests again to the enduring lodge. 

“We stay up for honoring the lodge’s legacy and serving as a vacation spot for the subsequent era of vacationers, galas and occasions for years to return,” he stated.