Show Us Your Sales Office: W Hotel & Residences

Thursday, April 17, 2008, by Joey

The city's developers are on an all-out blitz to lure well-heeed buyers to their projects, and the first front in this high-stakes war is the sales office—the base of operations for the building's sales and marketing. Nowadays, sales offices are just as luxurious as the condo units they're meant to sell. Show Us Your Sales Office will be your guided tour of the most over-the-top of the bunch. Got a sales office you want to show off? Drop us a line at tips@curbed.com and tell us why!

Beyond this door at 90 West Street, a luxury rental building just south of Ground Zero, lies a world of sex, money, intrigue ... and spaceships. It's the "sales experience" of the W New York Downtown Hotel & Residences—a 58-story Gwathmey Siegel-designed tower currently under construction around the corner at 123 Washington Street—and it certainly is an experience. The base of operations for the W's first New York condo-hotel is unmistakably Shvo, including the price tag on the space's build-out: over $1 million (they wouldn't tell us exactly how much). Why so fancy? The condo units, which come furnished or unfurnished and begin at the 33rd Floor, are priced around $2,000/sqft, way higher than its FiDi neighbors. To sell people on a non-traditional neighborhood at those prices, the Moinian Group and Michael Shvo knew they had to go all the way. Hence, a sales office that could have been a set in Minority Report, with plasma screens as far as the eye can see.

German design firm Graft (Brad Pitt's favorite!) handled all the ultra-modern interiors, and they also got to run wild on the sales office. The ribbon-like walls are the same that will be worked into the building and its 223 bachelor-pad residences. The space has a fully stocked bar, complete with W Hotel cocktail menu and full-time bartender. But the most over-the-top detail is no longer in service. The sales center and showroom are actually separate spaces on the ground floor of 90 West Street, about 60-70 feet from door to door. There used to be a W-branded chauffeured golf cart to shuttle buyers back and forth (Mikey's idea), but it was ruined in the Great Flood. Curse ye, gods! Click through the gallery to bare witness to this one-of-a-kind sales office.
· Construction Watch: FiDi's W Has Good Wood [Curbed]
· Revealed: W Hotel Will Sex Up the FiDi [Curbed]
· W New York Downtown Hotel & Residences [Official Site]