Back to the future: Mani Brothers plan boutique hotel at historic building

West Hollywood’s historic Piazza del Sol could become a hotel once again.

The owners of the 1927 building want to convert the four-story building into a 36-room hotel, with two restaurants and a rooftop pool and lounge.

Mani Brothers Real Estate Group, which purchased the property at 8439 Sunset Boulevard in 1999, presented the West Hollywood Historic Preservation Commission with its plan on Monday, according to Curbed.

Piazza del Sol is an office building with 56,000 square feet of space, and is home to the popular Katana restaurant.

It started its life 91 years ago as a luxury hotel called the Hacienda Arms Apartments. But things changed, and within a decade it was one of the most well-known brothels in California.

The following years saw a number of ownership changes. Singer Rod Stewart bought it in the 1980s with plans to make it a luxury hotel once again, but that fell through, and the building partially burned in a fire in 1983.

The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the California Register of Historic Resources and is a West Hollywood historic monument, which prompted the preservation commission review of the plan.

West Hollywood-based Mani Brothers has moved to break into the hospitality sector, expanding on what has been its mostly office portfolio. In July, the firm picked up a 205-unit Napa Valley hotel with plans to redesign and renovate it as a Curio Collection hotel, a brand of Hilton Hotel and Resorts.

The planned hotel conversion would include a restoration of the building’s façade and the addition of a rooftop structure for an elevator lobby and lounge-related uses. If approved, the proposal would go to the West Hollywood City Council for final approval. [Curbed] — Dennis Lynch