Don't Fight The Building

Andrew Zobler, CEO of developer Sydell Group, sees value in investing in history.

The hospitality industry has become an unexpected steward of historic properties, with restaurants, clubs, and hotels taking up residence in the structures of yesteryear. Andrew Zobler, founder and CEO of the Sydell Group, is well acquainted with this trend. Indeed, he’s been at the forefront of it: His 14-year-old company has led adaptive-reuse hospitality projects across the United States (and internationally, starting in 2017 with The Ned), giving old buildings new lives through families of hotels like NoMad, LINE, Freehand, and Saguaro. Speaking with Metropolis’s Lila Allen, Zobler discussed why hotels, beyond being places to lay one’s head or grab a drink, are increasingly places to travel through time.

Lila Allen: Sydell has had a big couple of years, with new properties including The Ned.

Andrew Zobler: We did two big things in these last couple of years. From a historic perspective, The Ned is certainly the most important. We also opened a large project in Las Vegas called Park MGM, which has a NoMad component, and we partnered with MGM on the building.

The Ned was a pretty complicated building, and an important piece of architecture in its own right. It was once the largest clearinghouse bank in the world, built at the height of the British Empire in the 1920s. So it’s a really grand building, with a soaring public space and beautiful marble columns.

These buildings are, of course, compelling because you want to keep them alive and give people reasons to come see them, and certainly you can’t build them today; it wouldn’t be costeffective. The art of it is finding buildings where you have a response that makes sense, because I always say: If you fight with the building, the building is gonna win.