Ian Schrager opens Public West Hollywood with a 150-person Studio club
Schrager, 80, says he avoided the word studio for decades as a crass exploitation, and the new club will have no selective door.
Ian Schrager has opened Public West Hollywood, his second Public hotel, in the former Standard building at 8300 Sunset Boulevard. The hotel opens Friday, and its centrepieces are Studio, a 150-person nightclub, and The Roof, a 16,000-square-foot landscaped terrace with 360-degree views of Los Angeles.
Studio revisits the spirit of Studio 54, the New York nightclub that Schrager helped make famous nearly five decades ago. The opening is a new chapter for the 80-year-old hotelier, who calls himself a nightlife visionary in the same breath as hotelier.
It is his third West Hollywood hotel, following the Mondrian in the 1990s and the West Hollywood Edition in 2019. Both of those are also on the Sunset Strip, so the new address extends a run of projects on the same boulevard.
At 1,502 square feet, Studio is an intimate, speakeasy-style club with dark interiors, theatrical lighting and an immersive sound system designed for dancing. Schrager said he had long avoided the word itself. "I've never used the word studio before because I thought it was a crass exploitation," he told WWD.
Still, he sees the club as a return to the original spirit: "non-stop sweaty dancing, almost in a tribal fashion, with a great soundstage type music system, with great music, so that people could really let their hair down and come in here and dance and have fun."
The famously selective door policy of Studio 54 will not carry over. Schrager hopes the room's atmosphere, rather than a velvet rope, will attract a like-minded crowd. He describes the project as a fresh perspective on the Strip rather than the filling of a particular gap.
"There's always an opportunity to bring well thought out, creative, inspired projects to a place," he said, adding that L.A. remains a natural market for his brand of hospitality. Of the hotel's public space, 75 per cent is outdoors, which he said seemed appropriate for the city.
What The Roof offers
The Roof is a 16,000-square-foot landscaped terrace, and Schrager chose not to make it another conventional rooftop bar or restaurant. It is given over to lush landscaping, outdoor seating, art installations, and sports and wellness programming, with a 30-foot outdoor movie screen. It is meant for hotel guests and locals alike.
The hotel was developed with architect John Pawson and a roster of international collaborators. Alongside the nightclub and rooftop, it has a social lobby, a pool deck and three food and beverage concepts.
Louis is an all-day bakery and café, Pool Bar is a day-to-night restaurant and cocktail space, and Pool Deck serves lighter daytime dishes. The culinary programme was developed with Shelley Armistead, formerly of the Gjelina Group, and chef Nicky Pickup.
For Schrager, how guests respond to the spaces matters as much as the design. "We don't tell the people how to use the space. They tell us, and that's the ultimate respect we have for them," he said.
Building on Sunset at the Edition
Schrager has already helped shape the Strip's nightlife with Sunset, the basement nightclub at the West Hollywood Edition. Rotating DJs and creative collaborators there have helped establish a gathering place for the city's entertainment and fashion communities, and at Public he hopes to foster the same spontaneity.
The lobby has a pool table at its centre and reflects his longstanding approach to hospitality, which puts the emphasis on environments that encourage people to interact. He remains confident in Los Angeles itself and in what it offers beyond the hotel door.
"There aren't many places in the world that are an hour from the mountains, snow, an hour from the desert, and an hour from the ocean," he said. "That's such a unique setting, and I think people maybe forget about that."
The source does not give room counts or rates for the hotel. What it does confirm is the scale of the social spaces: a club for 150, a terrace of 16,000 square feet and a lobby built around a pool table.
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Images: Public West Hollywood
