At Cooper Square Hotel, Balazs to rectify “mistakes” of former owners

Hotelier Andre Balazs is planning to reconfigure the Cooper Square Hotel into a “cost-conscious… center of a community,” and not a nuisance for its neighbors, he told the Wall Street Journal, following “mistakes” made by the hotel’s previous owner.

“I know the guys who built [the Cooper Square Hotel] originally, and I thought they miscalculated a bunch of things,” said Balazs, who purchased the hotel at 25 Cooper square, in November 2011 from Westport Capital Partners and has made plans to turn the property into a more subdued version of his first Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District.

“The way it was developed and built was completely misconceived in terms of its use as a public space and in terms of its relation to the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s a very residential community and they managed to make a design that pissed off the neighbors immediately. That’s a mistake. That’s not what we’re going to be about… Good hotels are a center of their community, and you can’t be the center of a community if the person next door to you can’t sleep.”

Balazs is expected to spruce up the 105 rooms, renovate the public space and redo the recently opened restaurant on the 21-story building’s ground floor, now called the Trilby. Rooms will start at about $190 per night. [WSJ]