I was invited to tour the construction site that is the Hotel Barriere Le Fouquet’s at 456 Greenwich and it seemed like a great opportunity to not only check out those North Tribeca views but see where the friction is between the hotel and the neighbors. Plus I’m a sucker for a hardhat tour and as it turns out, this was the most comfortable hardhat I’ve ever worn.

Developer Joshua Caspi leased the site in 2015 from the Ponte family, who owns a good chunk of North Tribeca, and for those first years, the project suffered through headaches, delays and a bankruptcy filing. But they picked up steam again with a new loan in 2019, and now the project is scheduled to be done in April 2022, ready for occupancy that following June. When I visited this spring, they had 100 workers on the site. (UPDATE: There are new numbers for the spaces, all updated below.)

The hotel takes up the full block from Greenwich to Washington along Desbrosses, and runs a couple hundred feet north from there. It’s more imposing than it is large; when you are inside none of the spaces seem all that big. For those that can wrap their minds around this sort of thing, it has a 12,000 foot print; 93,000 square feet total over eight floors. A third of the building is underground — the spa, with its signature pool, is deep below grade.

There will be three restaurants: the signature Le Fouquet’s on the corner of Washington with 130 seats 80 seats; a smaller casual restaurant in the back called Parici with 74 seats; and an 8th floor fine dining with a capacity for 115 setup for 40 on a roof deck with an awning. The lobby is five feet above the sidewalk with its main entrance on Greenwich.

It will take some imagination to understand the layout from these pictures, but the shot below shows how close the Greenwich Street neighbors are to the back restaurant. There’s no real back yard, so they will look right into the space. The 8th floor restaurant also had folks worried, but that is well above anyone’s windows, unless of course the sound drifts down. (The CB1 liquor license process is on hold while the developers hire new consultants and do more community outreach, Caspi said.)

The hotel will have 97 keys, and 30 of those will be suites. Caspi said it’s comparable to the Whitby or Crosby — boutique hotels in the Firmdale chain that is also developing the hotel on Warren and Greenwich. Basic room rates will be $1200, with suites going for up to $50k…a night. For fun Caspi is developing a wallpaper with F. Schumacher & Co. that will feature Tribeca icons like the Odeon, Tribeca Film Festival, Taxi Driver (for De Niro) and Hook & Ladder 8. The developers will also restore the cobblestones.

Fun fact: Caspi comes with a good origin story. When he was a kid (he’s in his early 40s) his father owned the Holiday Inn on West 57th and 10th (it’s now The Watson Hotel). Joshua worked there in the summers and had a skeleton key that he used to his advantage. Think Eloise, but with a suburban boy and set in the ’90s.

“I got into all sorts of trouble,” he said. “It was good fun for a kid who grew up in Westchester.”