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A hotel is coming to London’s famed BT Tower, but you’ll need to wait a few years to check in.<\/p>\n
MCR, a U.S.-based hotel ownership group that owns the TWA Hotel<\/a> at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), has a purchase agreement for the 620-foot BT Tower in London’s Fitzrovia neighborhood. BT Group, the building’s seller, announced the deal was worth 275 million British pounds (or about $348 million).<\/p>\n MCR plans to spend several years refurbishing the tower into a hotel and public space.<\/p>\n “We are proud to become owners and custodians of the iconic BT Tower,” MCR CEO Tyler Morse said in a statement<\/a>. “We will take our time to carefully develop proposals that respect the London landmark’s rich history and open the building for everyone to enjoy.”<\/p>\n Details of how many rooms will be at the hotel, or if the tower’s now-closed rotating top-floor restaurant might revive amid the renovation, weren’t specified in the company announcement.<\/p>\n Telecommunications BT Group, the tower’s namesake, will take several years to vacate the building amid moving its technical equipment elsewhere. From there, MCR plans on a design development and community engagement process before getting underway with the hotel work.<\/p>\n Daily Newsletter<\/p>\n Reward your inbox with the TPG Daily newsletter<\/p>\n Join over 700,000 readers for breaking news, in-depth guides and exclusive deals from TPG\u2019s experts<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The company is known for its painstaking process of refurbishing historic buildings and transforming them into modern, high-end hotels. The TWA Flight Center, the defunct airline’s architecturally acclaimed Eero Sarinen-designed terminal, transformed into the TWA Hotel under MCR’s purview. The company also owns the High Line Hotel in New York City and is currently underway with a redevelopment of the Gramercy Park Hotel.<\/p>\n “We see many parallels between the TWA Hotel and the BT Tower,” Morse said. “Both are world-renowned, groundbreaking pieces of architecture. It’s been a privilege to adapt the TWA Flight Center into new use for future generations, as it will be the BT Tower.”<\/p>\n MCR also gets its fair share of traveler critique (this reporter included) for its nickel-and-diming of certain hotel amenities, like charging a fee to access the TWA Hotel’s rooftop pool<\/a>. It is unclear if those pricing parallels will extend to whatever becomes of the BT Tower.<\/p>\n Unlike the TWA Hotel, the BT Tower hasn’t always been a hit with architecture buffs: The New York Times labeled it as one of “the World’s Most Hated Buildings<\/a>” in a 2015 article.<\/p>\n That just means there’s all the more reason for MCR to glam it up in the hotel renovation.<\/p>\n Related reading:<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n