Marriott International's boutique Edition brand is now coming to Los Angeles. New York developer Witkoff Group and New Valley secured $260 million to build the West Hollywood Edition Hotel & Residences, the first Edition hotel on the West Coast.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the financing was arranged by Jones Lang Lasalle, and will cover the majority of the hotel's $300-million construction budget. Boutique hotel pioneer Ian Schrager collaborated with Marriott to develop the Edition brand. The West Coast's first Edition will be less than a mile from the Mondrian, another hotel developed in a partnership between Schrager and a hotel group (in this case, Morgans Hotel Group).
Boutique hotels are huge in Los Angeles. The new Edition is set to begin construction this spring, and when it opens it will be facing eye-level competition from the Standard, SLS Beverly Hills and Starwood's W hotels (a third of which is planned for 2019). The Bicycle Hotel, a boutique luxury hotel designed to feed into the Bicycle Casino, opened in December, and an upcoming Nomad hotel is planned for fall 2017.
According to The Real Deal, the partnership between Howard Lorber's New Valley and Steve Witkoff's Witkoff Group is familiar with the Edition brand. In early 2015, the duo teamed up to sell two Edition hotels on the East Coast to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority for over $500 million combined. The first was the Miami Beach Edition Hotel, which sold for $230 million in February 2015, and the second was the New York Edition, which was unloaded for $343 million.
Edition hotels are changing hands about as rapidly as they are being developed. Another Edition is under construction in New York City, this time in Times Square. Two other international Editions were announced at the tail end of 2015, with one in Dubai (the brand's second in the UAE), and another in Reykjavik, Iceland. Both hotels are expected to open in 2018.