from today's Globe:
RESTLESS CITY: THOMPSON TORONTO GOING UP
How many five-star hotels can this city carry? Plenty
DEIRDRE KELLY
February 16, 2008
Conquest of the growing Canadian luxury-hotel market is the stated objective of the New York-based Thompson Hotel chain.
"We think of Toronto as a great extension of cities where we already have hotels, in New York and Los Angeles," Thompson co-owner Stephen Brandman, 44, said from London this week.
Thompson Toronto, yet another five-star hotel for the city, is opening summer, 2009, at 550 Wellington St. W. at Bathurst, within walking distance of the old Fort York garrison (which is also going through refurbishment for 2009, the year of Toronto's 175th birthday). The Canadian location will be a litmus test of how well Mr. Brandman's hot hotel brand can travel outside the United States, where its five art-laden properties are frequented by such celebrity guests as Russell Crowe, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Kidman and Prince.
The lure, observed Peter Freed, the Toronto condo developer who will piggyback a 340-unit residential project on top of the hotel's 102 guest rooms, is that unlike other so-called boutique hotels, the Thompson is more than just cutting-edge decor.
"I have stayed at 60 Thompson in SoHo, and also at the Roosevelt in Hollywood, and, basically, I was impressed not only with the design but with their ability to handle food and beverage in such a way as to make the hotel a destination."
The Toronto location aims to be a magnet of cool. Its three high-rise towers will feature floor-to-ceiling windows, 42-inch plasma TVs, private 40-seat screening rooms, and creative, interdisciplinary decor by hip Barcelona design studio Estudio Marsical, headed by Spanish artist Javier Mariscal.
Even cooler? An outdoor skating rink with an ice-side lounge, and on the roof, an infinity outdoor pool and bar, with unobstructed views of Lake Ontario, Fort York and the CN Tower.
Just don't call it a boutique hotel.
"I hate those words," decried Mr. Brandman. "The term has become so denigrated. What is a boutique hotel? A 900-room Hudson? A 100-room Mayfair? To many, the answer is more an oversized floor lamp with a red lampshade. We have nothing to do with that. We are a small, luxury hotel, a lifestyle hotel, if you will, that operates with the same consistency of a Ritz Carlton."