Content area
Full Text
When he checks into a hotel room at the end of a long day, the last thing Richard Toomey wants to find is no soap or lights that don't work. As a NYNEX Service Co. staff director, he feels confident every time he checks into the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza in White Plains.
"Everything works," he says. "I've never had to call down for more towels or complain about no hot water. It's well-maintained and trouble-free."
Kenneth B. Hamlet, president and chief executive of Holiday Inn Hotels, hopes Mr. Toomey and a lot of other business travelers have the same experience when they check into the new Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza opening in Times Square later this year.
"For years we have had a gap --not having a luxury hotel in Manhattan," Mr. Hamlet notes, even though Holiday Inn bills itself as the largest hotel chain in the world. "We've long wanted a significant hotel, with a significant developer, in New York."
That's William Zeckendorf Jr., whose Worldwide Plaza is opening on the site of the old Madison Square Garden on the west side of Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets, down the block from Holiday Inn's new facility.
The Crowne Plaza is the first phase of what will be at least a two-phase re-entry (it once had a motel franchise on West 57th Street) into Manhattan for the Memphis-based Holiday Corp.
The 770-room Crowne Plaza, rising on the west side of Broadway...