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Los Angeles

Chetrits sign lease with LuxUrban to reopen Trinity Hotel in DTLA

179-room property, closed for nearly a decade, is slated to open July 1

LuxUrban Hotels' Brian Ferdinand, 851 South Grand Avenue, Chetrit Group's Joseph Chetrit (Getty, Loopnet, Crunchbase)
LuxUrban Hotels' Brian Ferdinand, 851 South Grand Avenue, Chetrit Group's Joseph Chetrit (Getty, Loopnet, Crunchbase)

LuxUrban Hotels is ready to reopen the Trinity Hotel after the 109-year-old property in Downtown L.A. has spent the last quarter century collecting cobwebs.

The Miami-based hospitality firm has signed a 15-year master lease with the New York-based Chetrit Group to operate the 179-room, nine-story hotel at 851 South Grand Avenue, Urbanize Los Angeles reported. Financial terms of the lease were not disclosed.

The Beaux Arts hotel, which opened in 1914 as the Trinity Auditorium, is ready to open July 1, LuxUrban announced, under the “LuxUrban Ultra” brand.

“Downtown Los Angeles offers a wide array of cultural, entertainment and business activities and the region’s improving hospitality market reflects the abundance of opportunities that this bustling commercial and residential hub provides,” LuxUrban CEO Brian Ferdinand said in a statement.

The Trinity Auditorium, later known as the Embassy Hotel, was the location of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s debut in 1919. It hosted labor union meetings, jazz and rock concerts into the 1960s.

In subsequent years, it was used as an annex and housing complex by USC, until the Chetrit family acquired it in 1998. It hasn’t opened since.

For more than a decade, the New York-based Chetrits have sought to convert the 140,400-square-foot property into a hotel.

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The hotel opening stalled in 2014 because of a conflict between the property owner and the labor union Unite Here Local 11, which successfully blocked the family from obtaining alcohol permits.

While the project was eventually able to move forward through permitting, it has remained closed to the public.

The conflict also extended to the Trinity’s sister project, the Hotel Clark near Pershing Square —  an establishment the Chetrits have also sought to reopen for decades. Most recently, the Clark was slated to open its doors in September 2019. However, that date came and went without welcoming guests.

LuxUrban Hotels, formerly known as CorpHousing Group, manages a portfolio of hotel rooms in New York, Miami Beach, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. with 1,034 hotel rooms available for rent. In 2021, the company pivoted from leasing and re-leasing multifamily  units toward leasing hotels.

In December, the short-term rental company and its CEO were sued for more than $1 million after allegedly skipping out on rent at apartments across New York City. LuxUrban has called the accusations “meritless.”

— Dana Bartholomew

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