Hotel Clark, the 11-story building at 426 S. Hill Street that sat fully furnished and empty for more than a decade, has quietly started welcoming guests in Downtown Los Angeles. The property finished its interior makeover back in 2014 but remained closed to the public until this soft opening, a gap of roughly twelve years between completion and occupancy.
A Soft Launch After Years of False Starts
According to manilatimes.net, Hotel Clark has soft opened in Downtown Los Angeles, with the appointment of its executive leadership team by hospitality management firm OTH Hotels Resorts marking the property's new era. The building is described in that coverage as a 348-room lifestyle hotel, though Urbanize LA had previously reported it as an 11-story, 347-room hotel — the two accounts differ slightly on the exact room count. Urbanize LA, in its own report on the soft opening, titled Long-dormant Hotel Clark soft opens in Downtown LA, frames the milestone as the end of a long dormancy for the Hill Street building near Pershing Square.
Leading the property is general manager Adrienne Craig, whose appointment was confirmed by usa.boutiquehotelier.com. Executive Chef Gio Koletty oversees the culinary vision across the hotel's dining destinations, including its signature restaurant, Votana, per the same manilatimes.net report. Votana is already operating in a first-look, or soft-opening, phase, with its official grand opening party scheduled for October 15, according to the boutiquehotelier.com account, giving Downtown diners a specific date to watch even as the hotel itself has already begun taking reservations online.
More Than a Decade in Limbo
The hotel's path to opening has been unusually long and tangled. Hotel Clark originally opened in 1904 with more than 500 guest rooms, and the building was purchased by the People's Republic of China in the 1980s, which intended to transform it into a business and cultural center, per USC Dornsife. The property was later sold after a growing rift between the United States and China, also per USC Dornsife, eventually landing in the portfolio of the Chetrit Group, a New York-based real estate investment firm that still owns it today.
The Chetrit Group completed the bulk of construction necessary to open Hotel Clark before the pandemic, and the building's interior was substantially finished with most furnishings already in place by 2014. Yet the hotel and the adjacent Trinity Auditorium sat idle for years afterward — Eater LA reported that Hotel Clark and the nearby Trinity Hotel had each originally been expected to open back in 2016, with both projects experiencing lengthy delays since.
A Sister Property Still Waiting in the Wings
The Chetrit Group's broader Downtown holdings include 611 Place and the Trinity Ballroom, also known as the Embassy Hotel, on Grand Avenue. That building at 9th Street and Grand Avenue includes 183 converted hotel rooms, a rooftop deck, and a restored 2,000-seat auditorium, according to Urbanize LA. An operator for the Trinity was announced back in 2023, but the property has not progressed toward an opening, leaving completed rooms without occupants even as its sister hotel on Hill Street finally opens its doors. The Chetrit Group's broader real estate empire is reportedly in the process of being dissolved, though that status has not been independently verified beyond that attribution.
Downtown's Hotel Market Is Still Climbing Back
Hotel Clark's debut lands at a moment when Downtown LA's hospitality sector is recovering but not fully healed. Occupancy in Downtown LA averaged 77% in 2019, compared with 66.8% in 2022, while average daily rates rose from $182 to just over $189, according to bisnow.com. More recently, occupancy has held around 66% with an average daily rate of $191 and RevPAR of about $126, per the same outlet's reporting. The Los Angeles Convention Center generated roughly 177,000 booked hotel room nights in the first three months of the cited year, up from about 167,000 over the same period in 2022 but still below the pre-pandemic average of just under 229,000 booked between 2017 and 2019.
Nearby comparables suggest demand can materialize quickly once new rooms come online. Lightstone's AC and Moxy hotel project near the convention center, with its 380-room Moxy and 347-room AC Hotel, was completely booked during its first week thanks to an American Association of Neurological Surgeons event, Bisnow reported. The convention center had booked 17 events for 2024 and 15 for 2025, expected to generate more than roughly 225,000 room bookings annually, which could bode well for a freshly opened property like Hotel Clark.
Hotel Clark had also been counted among a wave of boutique hotels expected to open in Downtown Los Angeles, alongside the Hoxton Hotel and the Proper Hotel, according to ladowntownnews.com. The 24-story Park Fifth tower and adjacent Trademark apartments across Hill Street were completed and opened in 2019, Urbanize LA noted, as part of a broader reshaping of the block where Hotel Clark opened in 1904.
