Granite, glass and glamour
Isadore Sharp’s dream comes alive as new Four Seasons hotel opens its luxurious doors
It’s just a given that you’ve arrived — in life and in travel — when you pull up to a Four Seasons Hotel anywhere in the world.
But at the luxury chain’s new flagship hotel, which opens Friday on a stunning expanse of prime Yorkville real estate, “arrived” takes on even greater meaning.
This newest Four Seasons, the 90th in the world-renowned five-star chain, is a dream finally brought to life in granite, glass and glamour for legendary hotelier Isadore Sharp.
“You might say that this was 50 years in the making,” says Sharp on the eve of Friday’s ribbon-cutting. “To now have what we can classify as a true Four Seasons in Toronto, where it all started, is a momentous occasion. It is going to astound people when they arrive.”
The contemporary hotel-condo complex, which soars 55 storeys from the toniest corner in the city — Bay St. and Yorkville Ave. — is a stark contrast to the old hotel which, in Sharp’s own words, “felt like driving into a garage.”
This new complex, which features 259 hotel rooms and 210 high-end condos, 110 in a 26-storey east tower, is utterly the opposite and a gallery for some 1,700 commissioned paintings, sculptures and designs that showcase Canadian talent.
The hotel is open and inviting, right from the sprawling driveway meant to look like a Persian rug of interlocking brick to the sky-high lobby with private, but public, seating areas meant for getting multimillion deals done.
The celebratory drinks and dining are just a few steps away, atop a floating marble staircase that leads to Café Boulud, the latest food mecca from Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud and a spot Sharp hopes will become as much the go-place for locals as the old hotel’s beloved Studio Café.
While Café Boulud is far more bold and contemporary than the classic Studio Café, they were both lovingly designed by the same woman, Sharp’s wife Rosalie.
Right below the restaurant is dbar, featuring what is sure to become the most coveted seat in town — a semicircular couch that would be sitting right at the bustling corner of Bay and Yorkville, were it not for the wall of glass that keeps the bar both separate from and part of the streetscape at the same time. The hotel rooms are consummately Four Seasons and equipped with state-of-the-art gadgets, like an iPad, that guests have come to expect.
“The new Four Seasons Hotel Toronto is who we are today and what we represent as we move forward over the next 50 years — the world’s best luxury travel experience and a modern centre of the city’s social and business life,” says general manager Dimitrios Zarikos.
For the first time, the Toronto property will feature 30,000 square feet of bliss that’s destined to be “the best spa experience in the city,” says Katie Taylor, CEO of Four Seasons Hotel & Resorts.
She, like Sharp, doesn’t seem worried at all that the Four Seasons is coming late to the game as the last of the big five-star brands to open — behind the Ritz-Carlton, Trump International and Shangri-La — during economic uncertainty that continues to grip the world.
In fact, Sharp remains proud that the Four Seasons set a new highwater mark for luxury living in Toronto: Its penthouse sold for a record $28 million to an international buyer and its preconstruction con- dos set a record at $1,200 per square foot.
Sharp believes all those additional plumped pillows and fluffy bath robes will lure even more big spenders to the city.
Tourism Toronto agrees, saying they’re now seeing the growth of a new class of visitor to the city, “the sophisticated urban traveller.”
“The five-star boom has helped change the way people think about Toronto,” says Andrew Weir, vicepresident of communications for Tourism Toronto. “It’s bringing more business and convention travel, but it’s also attracting a higher end sophisticated leisure traveller who is not driving across the border because shopping is 60 cents on the dollar. They are flying here and staying longer and spending more money because they are seeing Toronto as one of the great urban experiences in North America.” The Four Seasons, like all hotels, suffered a downturn during the 2008 recession. But projects that were delayed are back on track. Four Seasons now manages 90 properties. Another 63 are under construction or in the planning stages and slated to open in the next decade. While the company is now controlled by Saudi Prince Al Waleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Company, every design detail still crosses Sharp’s desk for final approval. All those five-star, $400-a-night and up beds in Toronto may keep some folks up at night, but not Isadore Sharp. “When the world goes into a deep slump, everybody says the luxury market is going to disappear. But nobody goes backwards in lifestyle. People tighten their belt, buckle down, they conserve as best they can.”
Then when things start returning to normal, so do they, says Sharp.
“There are always people who will aspire to get into that top end. It’s just human nature. We’re a consummative society and people like to improve their life.
“The things the Four Seasons does helps them do that.”