Or, at least, it will be in April next year. Almost two decades in the making, the €750 million project includes the relaunched Samaritaine 20,000 square-meter department store and the latest edition of haute gamme hotel Cheval Blanc, 72 rooms all overlooking the Seine with a starting price of €1,500 per night, dreamed up by architect Peter Marino. Besides over a dozen restaurants – several designed to win Michelin stars – shared between store and hotel, there are a further 96 public housing apartments, and even a large two-story crèche.
LVMH acquired La Samaritaine back in 2001, a storied department store first built in 1870 by the famed Cognacq-Jay family, who boast their own impressive private museum deep in the Marais. Three years after the acquisition, LVMH closed the whole structure, citing major asbestos and structural problems in the main building. This began a convoluted series of proposals and negotiations with City Hall in Paris, which only really culminated in 2015, when proper construction began.
“Ernest Cognacq and Louise Jaÿ, who donated the motto ‘in constant progress’ to their store and their foundation, set the direction. I think I can say today that we have, with tenacity, respected their wish and that the La Samaritaine of tomorrow will more beautiful than ever, re-finding its place at the center of Paris,” said LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault.
April’s opening will also confirm LVMH’s ambitions as a high-end innkeeper. The new Cheval Blanc joins a luxe ski hotel in Courcheval, a tony hotel in St Tropez, and an elegiac resort in the Maldives. Moreover, it also joins LVMH’s burgeoning new division, LVMH Hotellerie, whose key element is the Belmond Group, acquired this spring, which includes such stellar names as the Copacabana Palace, Rio; the Splendido in Portofino and the Sanctuary Lodge in Machu Picchu. LVMH also already owned Bulgari, with hotels in Milan, Bali, London, Beijing, Dubai and Shanghai.
“It will focus on the Art of Receiving French Style. Most the major hotel groups are either Anglo-Saxon- or Asian-owned, so this will be a major difference. A residential hotel à la française,” commented Cheval Blanc CEO Olivier Lefebvre.
Cheval Blanc, which overlooks Paris’ most visited bridge Pont Neuf and the Ile de la Cité, where Notre Dame is located, will include roof top suites and 250-square-meter pool with views north to Montmartre; and a custom-made spa created with Dior Beauté. By Paris standards the rooms will be substantial – starting at 45 square meters. The Cheval Blanc chain already boasts two three-star restaurants, and its top eatery here will clearly be aiming to join that elect.
All told, the complex will create some 2,300 jobs, with 380 of them in the hotel, meaning a roughly four-to-one ratio of staff-to-guest – talk about pampering. Some 800 will work in the retail space, where 60 former staffers, laid off in the previous decade have applied for positions.
