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Almost Open - Really
New Haven Omni opens at last (for a sneak peek)
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Business New Haven
12/29/1997
By: BNH
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The slogan of Omni Hotels' current ad campaign is: “You Can See the City from Here.”
And so it will be in New Haven early next year, as diners in the 18th-floor Galileo's restaurant (the former Top of the Park when the hotel was the Park Plaza) enjoy the sweeping panorama of Long Island Sound, East and West Rocks and, a dozen miles to the north, Sleeping Giant.
The Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale opened its doors to guests for the first time December 16. In this case the guests weren't lodgers (the first of those are expected to arrive January 5, if all goes according to plan), but meeting planners and members of the media.
The long-awaited hostelry (city officials originally hoped to have it open in time for the Special Olympics World Games - which took place in June 1995) will have 306 guest rooms, 22,000 square feet of conference space (including the 9,200-square-foot “Grand Ballroom,” which can accommodate 750 guests for meals or about 1,000 in theater-style seating) and 21 conference rooms large and small, all on one level.
Omni officials characterize the New Haven facility as “Typically a corporate hotel,” with rates from $119 to $179 per night. Accommodations include a “Presidential suite,” six parlor suites, 146 “double doubles,” 55 “business kings” and 14 rooms fully accessible under guidelines established by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Immediate following January's “soft” opening, about 100 guest rooms and about half the meeting space will be available to guests. The 106-seat restaurant will be open to lodgers only until February. The grand opening will take place some time in March.
The $30 million renovation encompassed the building's entire infrastructure, construction of a new roof and new HVAC. The renovation “has transformed literally a shell of a building [in]to an elegant and fully functional hotel,” said General Manager Linda J. Libby.
Based in Irving, Tex., Omni Hotels was founded in 1958 by the Dunfey family of New England. Its first venture was Lamie's Inn of Hampton, N.H., which had 32 rooms. During the 1960s and '70s it was owned in turn by Aetna Life & Casualty Co. and Aer Lingus. Today its only other New England facility is the Omni Parker House in Boston, the nation's oldest operating hotel and the reputed birthplace of both the Parker House roll and Boston cream pie.
Omni Hotels operates 43 first-class and luxury hotels and resorts in the U.S. and Mexico. The company is embarked on an expansion agenda in first-tier markets and secondary cities (such as New Haven), with emphasis on the Midwest and western U.S.
Omni's point person in New Haven is Libby, who lives in Milford. She is a native Mainer and 20-year Omni veteran who also holds the title of vice president of operations for Omni Hotels, corporate. BNH
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