Another Standard bites the dust.
A year to the day that the Standard in West Hollywood shuttered, the Standard in Downtown Los Angeles will also close for good, according to Bisnow.
A recorded message on the hotel’s main phone line said that the Flower Street lodge will close “indefinitely” on January 22. West Hollywood’s Standard hotel closed on January 22 of this year.
While that date is a month away, the entrances to the hotel have already been either boarded up or locked and the parking lots have been blocked.
Spain-based Ferrado Group appears to own the Downtown L.A. property through Ferrado LA LLC. The Spanish company acted as a middle-man in the West Hollywood business, leasing the property from owner Rittersbacher Sunset LLC and collecting rent from the hotel’s operator Standard International.
Rittersbacher Sunset LLC in October listed the West Hollywood property. The Oregon-based entity reportedly wanted Ferrado Group to raise the Standards’ rent and Ferrado Group sued the entity last summer to prevent that.
It appears that Ferrado Group owns the Downtown L.A. property through Ferrado LA LLC.
Unlike many of L.A.’s other hotels, the Standard in West Hollywood nor the Standard in Downtown L.A. reopened after the first major wave of the pandemic.
Like hotels across the world, hotels in L.A. struggled in 2020 with forced closures and then dismal bookings.
The Luxe Rodeo Drive was among the other hotels in L.A. forced to close after the pandemic hit. LVMH bought the property earlier this month for $200 million, the priciest deal of the year.
Demand for rooms rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in October and November, a promising sign for those hotels that have reopened, but the future remains uncertain the face of the rapidly spreading Omicron variant of Covid-19.
Hotel investment sales have also rebounded somewhat, but that could be an indication that a high number of hotels have been forced onto the market because of coronavirus-related challenges.
[Bisnow] — Dennis Lynch