Revenge Of The Hotel King
Barry Sternlicht revolutionized the hotel world as he built Starwood into an $12.4 billion empire. Now he has to prove himself again. But will he ever satisfy his harshest critic?
Barry Sternlicht’s chauffeur-driven black G.M.C. Yukon rolls up to a crumbling brick building on the wrong side of the Stamford, Connecticut, train tracks. It’s a warm fall morning, and a nearby field of dumpsters casts a rank smell over the block. The site was a heavily used auditorium and dental clinic for workers at the Yale & Towne lock factory. When the plant closed in the late 1950s, the building started its inexorable decline: The windows are blacked out or broken; the front-door frame is stripped and exposed; inside, wires hang from where lighting fixtures have been ripped down. But for the next few months, this littered wreck is going to be the unlikeliest launching point for the greatest second act in American real estate.
