The atrium of the Hyatt Regency Greenwich on East Putnam Avenue in Old Greenwich is a football field long and four stories high, dating to November 1986. Within its glass-roofed confines, palm, fig, ficus and bamboo photosynthesize along the banks of a recirculating stream with a filter tucked unseen in the hummock beneath the fig tree.
An occasional finch finds its way in, said Anne Farb, the hotel”™s director of sales and marketing, “But they are not encouraged.”
In her 18-plus years”™ tenure at the Hyatt, Farb said nothing more exotic has gotten in. “No bats,” she said. Neither are there live fish in the atrium”™s creek, despite a one-time corporate request for them. The atrium fauna instead includes herons, a boy fishing and a girl watering ”” all in bronze ”” and strolling humans. “It”™s a very inviting place to meet and to network,” she said. Winfield”™s restaurant at the atrium”™s south end is available for business events.
Farb oversees a staff of 28 salespeople. The Hyatt Regency features 373 guest rooms, a dozen of which are full suites. Two food and drink facilities bookend the atrium: the copper-topped Gazebo Bar and Winfield”™s. Winfield”™s two years ago received replacement palm trees because the originals had outgrown the atrium. The hotel”™s front doors were removed for the delivery. The palms thrive, as do the other plantings, under the care of John Mini Distinctive Landscapes of Rockland County, N.Y.
The hotel”™s meeting and conference rooms are booked most weekends of the year, Farb said. She noted the high-end nature of many organizations, given the often-upscale Westchester/Fairfield demographic, but said, “We stress customer service. Some of our clients are on extremely tight budgets.” Or, she said, they want funds to go to the cause and not to the event. “We work with everyone ”” high end and low end. We are everything to everybody.”
The hotel features 35,000 square feet of meeting space. There is a single 10,000-square-foot ballroom and 28 smaller breakout rooms. “Organizations like that it”™s all on one floor, centralized,” Farb said. “The layout makes it easy to keep tabs on what”™s going on. When events take place on multiple floors, it can be difficult to know what everyone is doing.”
The hotel is only partly visible from East Putnam Avenue. “The town is very strict about building height,” Farb said of the Greenwich building code. “This building is not high, so people are surprised by how big it is. It”™s shaped like an L and it”™s very flexible.”
The hotel completed a $35 million remake in 2012 that included new furniture at Winfield”™s and the Gazebo and a new floor in the atrium.
As with any business that relies on traffic, location is part of the Hyatt equation.
“Both Westchester and Fairfield Fortune 1,000 companies use this hotel and a lot of Fortune 1,000 executives live in Westchester and Fairfield,” Farb said. “They”™re a big part of our business. A lot of those executives like the Hyatt for meetings. Let”™s face it ”” senior executives travel a lot. Any time they can do a meeting closer to home and spend a night in their own beds, it”™s important to them.”
For the leisure client, the hotel offers the nearby amenities of Greenwich and Stamford, plus a gym with pool and whirlpool and the Enzo Riccobene Salon and Spa. It is also the midway point between Washington, D.C., and “the cape” of Massachusetts and Farb sees many who stop over to break up the trip, both coming and going.
Visitors from the business world (weekdays) and the leisure world (weekends) share a desire to return, Farb said. The atrium is a big draw, she said, as is the hotel”™s Sunday brunch, which Farb described as “off the charts.”
“What we see is that a person who has attended a meeting will return,” Farb said. “Kids get married, bar and bat mitzvah ”” it all ties together.”
The hotel sits on the footprint of the former Conde Nast printing plant. The story-book Hyatt Regency tower and the stone obelisks dedicated to Conde Nast on East Putnam Avenue are the only remnants of that presence. It was built by Hyatt and has across its 28 years always been a Hyatt.
Among the Hyatt”™s more curious attributes ”” directly creditable to the atrium ”” is its place as a de facto weather base. Because it is always lush and dry, it is seen as an emergency photo op when skies are gray. “When the weather”™s bad, our phones ring,” Farb said. And why not? “People feel it is so beautiful. It is such a great place to come and get together and relax.”
