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Through the 1980s, the bustle at Lexington Avenue and 51st Street centered on Maude's, a lively if fading restaurant on the Summit Hotel's ground floor.
But in 1990, Loews Corp., the hotel's parent, began an ambitious $26 million repositioning. Maude's was replaced by the elegant Lexington Avenue Grill; the hotel was renamed Loews New York; and the tricky process of transforming a moderately priced midtown hotel into a deluxe property began.
The woman in charge of that task is General Manager Rebecca Sinn, 37. She confronts two major challenges: moving Lowes New York up in class without losing its current customer base and competing with other area upscale hotels on price.
"She needs to position the hotel above the discount corporate hotels but close enough to places like the Waldorf-Astoria or the Inter-Continental to take some of their customers," says Allen Toman, a director of PKF Consulting, a hospitality industry research firm.
BEGAN HER CAREER AS A LIFEGUARD