Hospitality Design - September 2011 - 135

2010 HONOREE

Managing Director, Design Best Western International

2008 HONOREE

Amy Hulbert

Sean Tanner
Principal Cagley & Tanner Las Vegas
Current projects include various spaces at Revel Casino Resort in Atlantic City; a major expansion and renovation of the Burswood Resort in Perth, Australia; a 756-room tower renovation at Bally’s in Las Vegas; the Pinnacle Resort in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and the recent renovation of the Mirage villas in Las Vegas (shown), “conceived as series of modern interventions in a traditional space.”

“It’s been an exciting year! I’ve been at Best Western for 16 months, and in that time we have launched the Best Western Premier descriptor in North America, and the Best Western Plus descriptor globally. Crafting the design guidelines for these descriptors and seeing them shape nearly 800 Plus hotels and 13 Premier hotels in North America has been an exciting challenge. The descriptor program burst out of the gates a success and momentum continues to build.”

2006 HONOREE

Lionel Ohayon
Founder and Owner ICRAVE, New York
Which of your recent projects are you most proud of ? Jetblue Terminal 5. This was a new format for us, and an opportunity to get into experiential design. We’ve done a lot more airport design and experiential design as a result of the success of that project—we just ﬁnished designing an iPad holder for one of our latest gate hold redesigns. Why did it take so long to bring good design to airports? The airport business came about as a direct result of a paradigm shift in air travel. Speciﬁcally, new TSA regulations required passengers to be at the airport longer and airlines no longer served meals on ﬂights. Both changes created an opportunity for brands to capitalize on airport retail and dining, and for us to reinvent what the airport experience is all about. You continue to create new venues for the One Group. What is in the works? We opened Ristorante Asellina in New York in November. The One Group asked us to create an Italian brasserie at the same time we were designing LAVO, another Italian brasserie in Midtown. Despite the same initial design brief, we created two very different spaces—it’s interesting to see the uniqueness of each. Coming up we have another STK opening in Midtown at the Grace Building in the fall and one in Atlanta. We are also ﬁnishing the ﬁnal touches on STK OUT, a new fast-casual little sister concept to STK, which we’re opening in Midtown and a larger-scale version in the Revel Casino Resort in Atlantic City. You designed multiple venues in the Meatpacking District. How has the area grown since you opened your ofﬁce there? It is completely gentriﬁed compared to what it was when ICRAVE moved in. It still needs more daytime experiences What else do you have in the works? Branding and product design—we’ve launched silos for both. We’re also working with one of the largest hospitality operators in Russia to introduce a new high-end live karaoke style concept in both New York and Miami; a complete renovation of the food and beverage spaces and gate hold areas at Terminal G in the Minneapolis St-Paul Airport, as well as dining concepts, media bars, retail concepts, and gate holds in the Delta terminals at La Guardia and JFK in New York. And look out for a new food concept that we’ll be launching on our own next year. Next for you in the area is Catch for the EMM Group. Catch [shown] is going to be an intimate neighborhood experience with a new perspective. It’s going to be upbeat with a casual vibe—the whole aesthetic is about not trying too hard. and retail—I’d love to see the more places to grab a coffee, and it would be amazing to see the pavilion in front of the new Bagatelle transformed into a proper piazza, with markets and events. Last year we redesigned the lobby of the Gansevoort Hotel, creating an indoor and outdoor café and a lounge area, all of which weave into the fabric of the neighborhood design-wise.

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