Hospitality Design - September 2016 - 140

housed in a derelict red brick-clad Salvation
Army building. To make her "bungalow
on the beach with a bit of rock 'n' roll and
elegance" vision come to life, Andrei brought
in a powerhouse team, many of whom she
had worked with before-Stonehill & Taylor
for architecture, David Bowd of Salt Hotels
for operations and part ownership (who ran
a free hotel school to attract local employees),
and Bonetti/Kozerski Studio for interior
design.
Knowing she wanted to create
programmed public space that would act "as
the new center of town" for locals, Andrei
had to open up the low-ceilinged, smallwindowed building that had little of the
space she was looking for. The team removed
a portion of the second level, and attached a
greenhouse-inspired addition to the front of
the building to push the footprint out (nearly
doubling the space), resulting in a dramatic,
double-height envelope-an idea from one of
her original sketches. "Since New Jersey is
the Garden State, the initial concept was to
take a greenhouse and slice it in half," says
Vince Stroop, principal of New York-based
Stonehill & Taylor, but because of hurricane
restrictions, the structure had to be custom
designed (a second greenhouse addition was
added to the events space).
Thanks to the original building's brick
façade with its window and door openings
that now serves as an interior wall, the lobby
is naturally divided into intimate nooks-
like a "great house," says Andrei. There's
4. The white marble and
white oak reception
desk also functions as
a grab and go, across
from which a cloudlike chandelier (one of
several in the lobby)
made from rattan shades
hangs above picnic
tables.
5. Soundbooth bar-
done in white swimming
pool gutter tiles and
aqua green-painted
fluted paneling with
custom plywood seating
and tables-sits next
to a wall filled with
vinyl records, CDs, and
cassette tapes handselected ("Each one has
a meaning," says Dowd)
from New Jersey record
stores.

5

4
the white marble reception desk backed by
white oak shelving that doubles as a grab and
go, set off by a series of picnic tables and a
cloud-like chandelier made of various sized
rattan shades hanging at different lengths
(the light fixture shows up elsewhere in the
lobby). On the other side of the wall, a cozy
sunken seating area (lower by 18 inches from
the finished concrete floor) is fashioned in
a colorful mix of velvet, linen, and silk and
wrapped with bookshelves. "It's a room in a
room," she explains.
To tie into Asbury Park's rich musical
history, the Soundbooth bar features a wall
filled with retro music media-from vinyl
records to cassettes and CDs-hand-selected
by the team. For the bar next to the music
library, they clad the front in stacked white
swimming pool gutter tiles, covered the back
wall in aqua green-painted fluted paneling
(which mirrors the wall by reception), and
scattered custom plywood stools, tables, and
benches that are easily movable in front
of it. "We like finding materials that may
not be used for a particular purpose and
repurposing them," explains New York-
Hospitality Design - September 2016

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