Ribbon-cutting for The Opus, new hotel at site of former Ritz-Carlton in White Plains

The formal opening of a new hotel in White Plains took place with a ribbon-cutting May 26 for The Opus, Westchester, an Autograph Collection hotel. It”™s at 3 Renaissance Square in downtown White Plains, where the Ritz-Carlton hotel had operated since 2007.

The Opus is managed by Crescent Hotels & Resorts, which has more than 100 hotels and resorts in the U.S. and Canada.

The Opus features 146 rooms, including 38 luxury suites. Features include 10,000 square feet of event space, a rooftop heated pool, lobby bar and rooftop restaurant, Kanopi, under the direction of Chef Anthony Goncalves.

At the opening ceremony, White Plains Mayor Tom Roach told the Business Journal, “I think the timing couldn”™t be better, at a time when we”™re coming out of the Covid pandemic. We”™re starting to see life return to the streets; we have this brand-new hotel joining our community and I”™m very excited about that. I think it says a lot about the confidence investors have in our community.”

Roach said that contributing to the city bouncing back from the pandemic is the fact that it maintained all of its services throughout this period.

“We”™re ready to hit the ground running and that”™s what appears to be happening,” Roach said. “We”™re seeing our traffic counts up markedly, parking is increasing quickly. Life is coming back and I think people are going to want to be in places they associate with having a good time and feeling safe and that”™s White Plains.”

Mark Weissman, one of the people responsible for bringing The Opus to White Plains, told the Business Journal that they were lucky to be able to use the time during which Covid forced hotels to shut down to do the renovation and rebranding.

“A lot of our customers were really looking for an updated experience,” Weissman said. “We also saw that the city of White Plains is really coming alive with a lot of residential projects and hopefully after that a lot of commercial projects so we thought that an updated hotel and a renovated hotel would do really well here.”

Weissman expressed a hope that by September there will be an end to the Covid crisis in the U.S. and the hospitality industry will bounce back.

“The Crescent management team is very, very in tune with the needs of the community here,“ Weissman said.

“We”™re really excited about moving to the Marriott Autograph Collection which allows us to sort of cater to a much, much wider audience. I think the Ritz was a great upscale experience but probably didn”™t allow us to reach a clientele which we really wanted to reach and also some of them, business travelers, weren”™t even allowed to go as upscale as the Ritz.”

Elizabeth Andrews, the hotel”™s general manager, said that room occupancy has been steadily growing in the few weeks that the rebranded hotel has been open.

“We”™ve been very fortunate that we”™ve been seeing quite a bit of leisure travel coming back,” Andrews said.

“We have had some very busy weekends. We have a lot of families that are ready to get out of their houses, that are ready to go on vacation, that are eager to have some fun out in the world again. We are also very hopeful and optimistic that business travel will start to pick up again, hopefully come September, maybe even sooner. We”™re starting to see a little bit of business travel here at The Opus, Westchester, and we”™re very optimistic that we’ll see more in the near future.”