The Four Seasons Hotel in New York — shuttered for more than three years during an epic standoff between the property’s billionaire owner and the company that owns the luxury brand — faces one final hurdle before it can reopen its opulent doors, The Post has learned.
The famed hotel at E. 57th St. has yet to hold contract talks with the powerful New York Hotel and Gaming Trades Council about the fate of laid-off staffers after announcing it will reopen next year, according to the union.
“There haven’t been any formal negotiations between the hotel and union but we have no reasons to believe that any issues relating to the reopening can’t or won’t be worked out,” Trades Council spokesman Austin Shafran told The Post.
Ty Warner, who owns the iconic I.M. Pei-designed Manhattan location, turned off the lights in March 2020 — and at another building housing a Four Seasons in Santa Barbara, Calif. — in a dispute over fees and profit margins with the Toronto-based hotel company.
But the warring factions apparently buried the hatchet last month, announcing they “have been working together to prepare for the highly anticipated reopening” of both locations next fall.
“At this point, only an agreement with the union is still required to open Four Seasons New York, which I’m optimistic will be coming soon,” Warner, the reclusive founder of Beanie Babies, recently told The Post in an exclusive interview.
That may not be as simple as turning the lights back on at the once-swanky 52-story hotel after the Four Seasons laid off the roughly 350 unionized workers because of the dispute with Warner.
About 100 of the sidelined workers took a lump sum severance payout worth a whopping $10 million in a deal negotiated in 2021 as COVID lockdowns ravaged the hotel industry, as The Post previously reported.
However, the remaining former staffers, some of whom have found jobs at other hotels, may want their positions back at their previous pay and will have first dibs on the jobs, according to Shafran.
“The current hotel staff that are on layoff are absolutely, unequivocally entitled rights to their former positions once the hotel reopens. That’s a right guaranteed by our contract,” the rep said.
Whatever “issues” the union sees as needing to be “worked out” before the hotel reopens “will remain private,” he added.
Four Seasons also has been actively recruiting people for the New York property including a hunt for a director of finance, according to its LinkedIn page.
Labor costs were among the contentious issues that Four Seasons and Warner tussled over for several years, with Warner contending that the property was not profitable enough, in part, because of its labor costs, industry experts told The Post.
The 383-room hotel — which opened 28 years ago and charged a then-astronomical $400 a night — also faces new competition in the luxury hotel market when it reopens next fall.
The most exclusive newcomer is Aman New York, located down the street at E. 57th St., where room rates for its 83 suites start at an eye-watering $3,000 per night.
“Aman is the most expensive hotel in the city by far and is establishing a new threshold,” Sean Hennessey, a professor at New York University’s Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality told The Post. “Four Seasons will have to play catch up with Aman.”
The Four Seasons has been under renovation for the past several years, though it’s not clear what upgrades await guests when the hotel reopens.
“It will have renovated rooms, restaurants and public areas,” said Warner, without providing additional details.
“People don’t build 383-room luxury hotels anymore,” added an industry source. “The luxury market has evolved over the past three decades.”
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