Colby Brock, an interior designer who”™s back in the family business as a food and beverage manager, takes credit for the ceramic moose head ”“ an albino moose, it appears ”“ that hangs in a corner of the renovated lobby of her family”™s Radisson Hotel in downtown New Rochelle.
“People love Hubert,” she said of the antler-racked wall mount, an animal-kingdom complement to “that organic kind of feeling” and nature-brought-indoors ambiance of the Parsons masters graduate”™s lobby design.
The daughter of Radisson Plaza owner and Florida shopping-center developer Peter Brock, a principal of Brock Development Corp. in Palm Beach Gardens, Brock has overseen a $2-million, two-year makeover of the 37-year-old, 130-room hotel that began early last year. In March, the hotel”™s City Chow House restaurant after renovations will open as NoMa Social ”“ as in North of Manhattan ”“ featuring a Mediterranean menu created by chef Bill Rosenberg, who arrived at 1 Radisson Plaza last summer from F.I.S.H., the Port Chester seafood restaurant. The City, the after-10 p.m. weekend nightclub that Brock manages, will stay in the new NoMa space.
Brock mischievously named the albino moose after Hubert Coly, CEO of Carlson Hotels, the Minneapolis, Minn., company that owns the Radisson brand. Coly and Carlson are intent on upgrading the hotel brand and “moving to more upper-scale clientele,” said Rhonda Hausman, the general manager who joined the Brocks”™ Radisson Hotel in 2011.
Carlson last year took away about 15 franchises from hotel owners who were not willing to make renovations, she said. The Brocks were among the first Radisson owners to implement the brand initiative.
“We”™ve been here a really long time,” Brock said. “My father has always told me, ”˜Be good to your business, and it will be good to you.”™”
“It”™s not only changing the concept and the brand and changing the clientele, it”™s staying fresh. When the economy takes this kind of turn, we actually spend more money, so when the market turns around, we”™re ready.”
Brock”™s grandfather, Herbert Brock, a former New York toy-doll manufacturer, and a partner saw real-estate opportunity in New Rochelle in the 1970s. “There was this void in south Westchester of hospitality product,” Brock said. “They fulfilled a need.” To the south, Co-Op City, one of the world”™s largest cooperative housing developments, was completed in the Bronx in 1973. “It was location, location, location.”
“There are no hotels in the Bronx, so this is a pretty great location,” Hausman said.
The full-service hotel, which includes a ballroom that seats 300 persons, 6,500 square feet of catering facilities and business meeting rooms, opened in 1975 under the Sheraton flag. Brock said her father moved to the Radisson franchise after Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. built and opened the competing Sheraton Tarrytown five years ago. The Radisson has about 85 employees, some of whom have worked at the hotel since its opening 37 years ago, Hausman said.
To augment their anticipated seasonal hotel trade, the New Rochelle hotel developers built a 50,000-square-foot corporate office tower on the top floors of the 10-story building. Current tenants include a chiropractor, beauty spa, law firm and mortgage and medical billing companies.
