1. 01.10.06 REAL ESTATE, OCTOBER
Hotelier returns to Seattle with a flourish – and a view
Four Seasons hotel is coming back to Seattle, this time attached to condominiums in a modernist glass,
stone and oxidized metal sculpture that promises to transform the skyline.
The 21-story building at First and Union streets isn't even up yet, but buyers are voting with their
wallets. More than half of the condos have been snagged at prices of $2,100 per square foot. Many of
the new buyers are Washington CEOs for whom the property will be a second or third home. The two
penthouses, going for $8 million, each have their own elevator. The smaller penthouse is 4,000 square
feet with a 500- square-foot terrace. "The Four Seasons is breaking all price records," crows Bob Rennie,
who handles marketing for the hotel here. "What they're doing, no one can duplicate."
When the Four Seasons lost the management contract for the Olympic Hotel in 2003, it looked like
Seattle had lost the hotel forever. A few business leaders didn't want to let that happen. John
Oppenheimer, president of Columbia Hospitality Inc., which manages the Bell Harbor International
Conference Center, Bruce McCaw, telecom entrepreneur, Tom Alberg, managing director of the Madrona
Venture Group, and Paul Schell, former Seattle mayor, worked with Four Seasons' management in
Toronto to find a new home for the hotel. "With the Four Seasons gone, there was this tremendous
void," says Oppenheimer.
For the design of the new building, the group picked Bill Bain, the architect who designed the original
Seattle Four Seasons, the Olympic Hotel, as well as such landmark retail establishments as Pacific Place.
Bain spent hours at his home on Seattle's waterfront studying the light as it hit the water, the mountains
and the boats gliding by. He designed a U-shape building that will afford nearly all of the 150 hotel
rooms and 25 condos spectacular views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. "I wanted to bridge
Seattle's waterfront with the mountains," says Bain.
Oppenheimer says the new Four Seasons will be exclusive, serving guests at the CEO level. People like
that "don't want to be standing in line behind a group of conventioneers," he says. Even the Fairmont is
closer to being a convention meeting hotel at 450 rooms, he says.
Four Seasons boosters like to tell the story of a 1998 dinner party at the Chicago Four Seasons at which
former first lady Nancy Reagan was in attendance. The maitre d'hotel, unable to procure a tuxedo for a
guest who hadn't come properly prepared, took off the one he was wearing, had it pressed and lent it to
the guest.
"In terms of the physical building, someone could raise (the money) and put in marble and everything
like that, but it's much more complex to build staff that can offer the highest level of service," says Peter
Hodgson, vice president of planning for Four Seasons corporate headquarters in Toronto.

2. Condos will have limestone walls in the bathroom, hand-tooled wood cabinets and natural stone counter
tops. "We have to tame the outdoors and celebrate that," says Susan Marinello, designer of many of the
residence interiors. Foreign potentates and stars such as Matt Damon are said to "gravitate" to the new
Four Seasons in San Francisco. Check back in 2008, when Four Seasons opens its doors, to see if that
happens here.
– Joanna Kadish