The 106th Ritz-Carlton opened on the corner of 28th and Broadway on June 26, 2022. By Maya Kachroo-Levine
The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad, a newly built 50-storey hotel with design by A-list talent including Martin Brudnizki and the Rockwell Group, debuts 92 years after its sister hotel, The Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park. And while the 219-room NoMad property promises to be just as luxurious as its uptown counterpart, it also has all the makings of a cheeky little sibling, from the forthcoming ’20s-inspired rooftop speakeasy to the explosion of plant life that greets guests in the lobby. One of the most anticipated 2022 openings for the Marriott luxury brands — following the springtime unveiling of The Madrid Edition, and preceding the fall’s inaugural Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection sail — The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad is, as they might say on Bridgerton, Marriott’s “diamond of the season.”
Here’s a look inside the new Ritz Carlton in New York
“This is [The Ritz-Carlton’s] first new build in the USA in quite some time. And to have that in New York City is a very rare opportunity,” Donna McNamara, vice president and global brand leader for The Ritz-Carlton, told Travel + Leisure exclusively. Marriott broke ground on the property in 2018, and four years later, McNamara and I sat in a 1,100-square-foot suite — facing a picture window with a full view of the Empire State Building. A four-year turnaround on a 50-storey hotel in the heart of Manhattan is pretty impressive these days, considering the pandemic and seemingly inescapable global supply chain delays.
A week before the hotel’s opening, I stood on the outskirts of a pep rally held in the 10,000-square-foot Ritz-Carlton ballroom. It’s a full-on hype fest — an endearing ritual held ahead of each Ritz-Carlton opening, but nonetheless best observed from the perimeter, as the pep manifests in more fist-bumping than expected. “What a showpiece you have,” Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano said, addressing the newly appointed staff. “Floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere I look, maybe the most beautiful bar I’ve ever seen, an incredible food and beverage partner, multiple outlets, and a stunning spa. You’re going to be the talk of New York — and the entire Ritz-Carlton family.”
While most luxury city hotels are designed as an escape from the rush of their bustling locales, The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad embraces the neighbourhood’s electricity.
“What this [hotel] brings is a new energy, and it really showcases the future vision of The Ritz-Carlton in a very dynamic neighbourhood,” McNamara added.
The ground-level goings-on of the enclave north of Madison Square Park informs not only the design, but also the experience within the hotel. It starts with the lobby flower cart, where guests can pick up floral-inspired treats each day at 3 pm, the greenery cascading down the lobby bar, and the black-and-white flower prints in each guest room, all influenced by the New York City Flower Market, a block west of the hotel, between 6th and 7th Avenues. It’s one of McNamara’s favourite examples of how the team “brought a sense of place into the design” and the “neighbourhood to life” within the hotel.
The culinary heavyweights haven’t fully descended on NoMad — though, of course, on the edge of Madison Square Park is Michelin three-star Eleven Madison Park, and a few blocks farther east lies Stephen Starr’s Upland. The opening of The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad changes that: In partnership with José Andrés, they’ll bring in two of his signature restaurants — longtime D.C. favourite Zaytinya (opened on July 26 with the rest of the hotel) and the fifth outpost of The Bazaar, slated to open before the end of the year. As McNamara told T+L, the goal of the double Andrés threat is to “raise the culinary offerings in this neighbourhood to a new level.”
And to all but outdo NoMad’s finest watering holes comes Nubeluz, on the 45th floor of the hotel. Designed by Martin Brudnizki — whose most recent hotel work includes The Britely club within Pendry West Hollywood and London’s soon-to-open Broadwick Soho — Nubeluz will evoke ’20s style. When the bar, with panoramic vistas of the city (including a bird’s-eye view of Times Square while remaining blissfully just out of earshot), opens this fall, the cocktails, served alongside Andrés-approved tapas and charcuterie offerings, will match the speakeasy motif.
Though the bar skews vintage, the rest of the property leans heavily into modernity. The top-tier suite, aptly named The Ritz-Carlton Suite, has a separate media room and a Peloton; the 6,800-square-foot subterranean spa is outfitted with all the high-tech trimmings required for treatments designed by luxury skin care leaders (Augustinus Bader, among others).
The more time I spent at the new hotel, the easier it was to understand why the heavily trafficked NoMad area is the perfect place for the next phase of the Ritz-Carlton’s presence in New York. McNamara said, “[For] people who might be new to the brand or might be loyalists, to show them something quite new and fresh is an important opportunity for us.”
This story first appeared on www.travelandleisure.com
Main and Feature Image Credit: Courtesy of The Ritz-Carlton New York, Nomad
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