“As chairman of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, I was talking daily to local businesses that had considerable challenges,” recalls Nick Rimedio, general manager of the 105-room Kimpton La Peer, in West Hollywood, California.
The new-build hotel, which opened in January 2018 has more than 3,600 square feet of meeting space, is owned by San Francisco-based KHP Capital Partners, the company that sold Kimpton to IHG in 2015. KHP Founding Partner Mike Depatie, former president and CEO of Kimpton, long has understood the symbiosis between a hotel and its community. Rimedio, following that culture, has volunteered with local councils for over seven years.
“I was so excited when we opened the hotel, a haven of what we call unbuttoned luxury. We were geared to operate without a script and it worked. We were the only hotel in the area recognized by Forbes Travel Guide. But when COVID hit in March, we were down to two or three bedrooms taken every night, with no events, and we had to let so many of our team go. I was feeling nervous and also angry. We could not let this happen,” he explained.
In consultation with ownership and brand management, he was determined, anyway, to stay open, to recover faster – and then he had what he now describes as a “Dostoyevsky moment.” “Wearing my chamber of commerce hat, I was on calls the whole time listening to small businesses wondering what to do, and the solution was pretty easy.”
After a few more telephone calls and some socially distanced meetings, La Peer had reconceptualized its ballroom, breakout rooms and some of those empty bedrooms.
“Our Pop-Up Bazaar started operating from 1st June. In all now, we have eight tenants, who include a barber, Melrose’s hottest restaurant, a boutique, an artist studio, a photographer in residence, a foam roller studio, a deep tissue masseuse and a stretch therapist,” he said.
The new partner that garners most publicity is the GBK Brand Bar, a concept store run by Gavin Keilly, Hollywood’s red-carpet events guru who designs and produces everything from parties to take-home goody bags filled with brand-name gifts worth many thousands of dollars. (Keilly, by the way, has an extremely strong area following boosted by having given over US$10 million to charity in the past 15 years.)
Here, ensconced in the property’s front retail space, GBK Brand Bar’s range includes the couture face masks that bring in dozens of locals, or at least their personal shoppers. Keilly, like all the Bazaar tenants, has an open-ended contract with the hotel, which hopes to keep him there through 2021: All tenants bring in their own staff, and cover relevant insurance, but the hotel benefits through substantially increased footfall and additional food and drink sales.
The presence of the Pop-Up Bazaar also undoubtedly cheers up the remaining Kimpton team members, including the GM.
“As a boy, brought up with four siblings in Akron, Ohio, looking back I remember a household of hospitality, and throughout high school I waited in fine dining restaurants — it was my hobby and passion. Between studying international affairs at the American University of Paris, in France, and completing an international business administration degree at the University of Akron, I had, at 19, started what turned out to be a three-year management challenge in turning around a restaurant my family owned.”
A few years in the freestanding restaurant sector, including running Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, gave way to hotels when one of his bosses added bedrooms. Rimedio relocated to the Los Angeles area in 2014, as hotel manager of Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills, and moved on in October 2016 to pre-open La Peer.
“I have always found the lodging dynamics fascinating. In standalone restaurants you have 90 to 120 minutes’ intense interaction with guests, but in hotels they are around two to three days. Now, interacting more with locals, the time frame is endless.”