Hospitality Design - July 2017 - 154

ANDREW
ZOBLER
Founder and CEO
Sydell Group
New York
"I would like to say starting the Sydell Group was part of a grand
plan but the idea was to put together projects that we thought were
compelling-there wasn't any grand strategy to take over the world,"
explains Andrew Zobler, CEO of the New York-based firm he founded
in 2005 with partner, investor Ronald Burkle.
Growing up, Zobler traveled the world searching for vintage finds
with his company's moniker, his grandmother Sydell, who was in
the antique business. "I always had this appreciation for found things
and for design, but I never really did anything with it in my career
until much later," says Zobler, a former lawyer who cut his teeth with
Starwood Hotels & Resorts and hotelier André Balazs.
At first, Sydell Group was solely a developer-most notable for
industry game-changer Ace Hotel New York-but when it came to find
the right operator for the NoMad, which opened in 2012 in a Beaux Arts
limestone building in its now-namesake neighborhood in New York,
he had an epiphany: "We had more of a vision for creating something
really authentic to the building and the neighborhood," he says. "[If we
brought in an outside company], it would be more about fitting in their
box, and our whole DNA is to not have a box."
Sydell is expanding the luxury NoMad brand in the next year to
both Los Angeles (in the iconic Giannini Building downtown) and Las
Vegas (part of the Sydell-MGM $450 million transformation of the
Monte Carlo into the new Park MGM). "Where New York is old school
Parisian meets New York bohemian, LA is a completely different
tension between classical Northern Italian and Californian," he says,
noting the brand's original designer Jacques Garcia will handle the new
outposts (Park MGM will be a Martin Brudnizki-Sydell effort). After
the success of the Line Hotel, which opened in LA's Koreatown in 2014,
a second will open later this year in a former church in Washington,
DC (a collaboration with New York-based INC Architecture & Design).

DC might not seem like a logical choice for the eclectic,
hyper-local brand, but for Zobler, "It was about falling
in love with the building and it was super attractive
to be in a residential neighborhood and not in the
most traditional hospitality location." A 420-room
property in Austin will follow in 2018 with interiors
by Venice, California firm Knibb Design, the firm
behind the LA property. And after openings in
Miami and Chicago, Freehand, Sydell's communalfocused hostel-hotel hybrid, recently debuted in LA
and is heading to New York next year. "It has this
youthful energy, this friendliness that is sincere," he says.
The model includes shared rooms to attract young travelers,
and suites (as well as roomservice and a doorman) for business and
more seasoned guests.
Although each property is unique, Zobler says they speak to each
other thanks to Sydell's idiosyncratic-location and architecturally
driven-way of creating hotels. "To me it's a lot easier to bring a bunch
of people together," he says. "We spend a lot of time finding [people who]
weave together a great story and then we let them do their own thing."
Take chef Daniel Humm and restaurateur Will Guidara of Michelinstarred Eleven Madison Park fame, who he brought in to run NoMad's
namesake restaurant and now are an integral part of the brand. Or
the celebrated design duo Roman and Williams, who helped define
Freehand as a comfortable yet inspired space. "Whether it's Freehand
speaking to a hipster kid on a budget or it's NoMad speaking to an
elegant couple from abroad, the attraction [to both] is not so different," he
says. "There's a sense of style, there's a point of view, there's great food.
It's just being done at different levels, but it's tied together in a way that
all makes sense."
His latest and most ambitious collaboration to date is the Ned
in London. A partnership with Nick Jones of Soho House & Co, the
hotel-membership club combo is a restoration of the iconic circa-1924
former Midland Bank, a Grade One-listed building, outfitted with nine
restaurants, 252 bedrooms, a spa, and the club, which gives members
access to a massive rooftop pool, gym, and late-night lounge Ned's
Downstairs, tucked in one of the restored basement vaults and lined
with 3,000 original safety deposit boxes. The idea was that "if we put the
two of us together, we could do something that was much better than the
sum of its parts," he notes.
"Sometimes when I look back at the early ones, I [see] how naive we
were, what we didn't know," he says. With opening eight hotels within 18
months, "it's important to see the forest through the trees."

Guestrooms at the Line DC,
a collaboration with INC
Architecture & Design, feature
an eclectic mix of furniture
and framed artwork

154

July 2016 hospitalitydesign.com
Hospitality Design - July 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - July 2017
