Back to Where It All Began

A Conversation on the 20th Anniversary of the Gramercy Park Hotel Reopening

Twenty years ago, Amy O'Keefe and Danielle Gorand were two young hospitality professionals who had just arrived at what would become the most talked-about hotel in New York City. Both went on to build distinguished careers in events and hospitality, and today, they work together again planning and producing events nationwide.  In honor of the 20th anniversary of the 2006 reopening of the Gramercy Park Hotel under Ian Schrager, we sat them down to remember the experience that shaped them both.

***

What was New York hospitality like in 2006?

Amy: It was a boom time for events. Companies were spending freely, people were out partying, and the city had this lively energy. Looking back, it felt celebratory and a bit wild. The spending hadn't slowed yet, the recession hadn't come, and you could feel that in the rooms we were filling.

Danielle: In retrospect, it was of one of the most exciting eras in New York hospitality. The city had found its confidence again after 9/11, and the boutique hotel movement Ian Schrager had practically invented was at its height. The LES was emerging as the nightlife epicenter, while the West Village kept its cachet with coveted tables at The Spotted Pig and Waverly Inn, before slipping past the gatekeepers to dance at the Beatrice Inn. These were places people just wanted to be. Not for a post, just to be there.

What made the Gramercy Park Hotel different from anything else in the market?

Amy: It was the next evolution of the boutique hotel into luxury. Those two things hadn't really lived together before. Ian Schrager focused heavily on the design but also the hiring and the training—every detail was deliberate. The goal wasn't just to be cool. It was to be cool and impeccable.

Danielle: Exactly. Before Gramercy, 'boutique' meant cool with no service, and 'luxury' meant stuffy and boring. They were mutually exclusive. GPH was the collision of those two worlds. Ian aimed for a new kind of modern luxury that was sophisticated, magical, and provacative. It was meant to create an emotional reaction that nobody else in the luxury hotel market was daring enough to try.

What do you each remember most about arriving at the property?

Amy: I remember my first interview in the basement offices below the hotel.  This would become the behind the scenes - where we built a catering and sales department, a culture, and life-long friendships.  The hotel was still a construction site, but I didn't need to see the finished product to be sold on the opportunity.  

Danielle: I remember the scent of the Le Labo candles. The moment you walked in, it hit you, and it just said: this place is different. It wasn't a generic hotel lobby smell. It was intentional, specific, almost like a signature. And then the art—Julian Schnabel had filled that space with pieces that would have lived in a museum, just right there as part of the everyday environment. For someone at my stage of career, that was genuinely overwhelming in the best way. I immediately thought: Amy needs to be here.

Amy: She called me, and within about a month I'd interviewed, accepted, and moved from Washington, D.C. I started just a few days before the soft opening. I remember the day we opened the doors - the last moments of perfecting the details and the team in place waiting for the first guest to walk in the door.  That was when it started to feel real.

What was the most exciting part of those early days?

Danielle: The realization that we were creating something that would be felt for years to come. It wasn't just about setting up traditional hotel operations. It was about mastering the lighting, the unconventional flow of the lobby, and curating the entire staff—even holding casting calls for the doormen to ensure the right aesthetic. It all felt so electric.

Amy: For me it was seeing something come to life. There were hiccups for sure, but the camaraderie of everyone working together through them was really special. I miss those in person office days—where you could just turn around and ask a question or bounce an idea off someone. There was a real proximity, and it mattered.

Any memorable chaos?

Amy: There was a sprinkler mishap during one art installation. Art handlers hit one of the sprinklers while adjusting a Damien Hirst painting. It was bad. Inches of water in the Rose Bar and lobby. We all helped roll up carpets and redirect guests. That's the kind of thing that bonds a team very quickly.

Danielle: Honestly, pre-opening was one big thrilling blur of chaos. We were trying to book high-profile clients and secure corporate hotel programs based entirely on unconventional renderings and paint swatches. I’m pretty sure most of our site visits weren't even up to code; we were literally taking corporate clients in suits up the exterior construction elevator in hard hats, trying to sell a luxury vision that didn't exist yet.

What were some of the standout events or moments?

Amy: The Marc Jacobs Fashion Week after-party was a standout - it was held in the not-yet-open restaurant, a construction space, with a tented sidewalk outside the hotel. This was THE party of fashion week, and it was chaotic and magical.

The celebrity factor at Gramercy Park Hotel was sort of unreal over the years.  I had never seen so many famous people - Leonardo DiCaprio, Cindy Crawford, Axl Rose, Robert DeNiro, Jon Hamm, Kate Hudson, Valentino, The Clintons.  Guests weren’t supposed to smoke on the rooftop, but they often did and I was too embarrassed to ask them to stop (plus, it was part of the vibe).

Danielle: One of the standout events for me has to be the CW's Gossip Girl party in 2008. It was the absolute show of the moment, we were the hotel of the moment, and the energy in the hotel was pure electricity—just absolute magic. Everyone wanted in, and everyone was there. And then, of course, there was the Rose Bar itself, which was the place to be any night and every night. What Nur Khan and Frank Roberts curated in that room was nothing short of nightlife brillliance.

What did those years teach you about the business of luxury hospitality?

Danielle: Early on, Jim McPartlin, the General Manager, said something to me that I've never forgotten. I went to him with something I'd learned from the front desk—something that had surprised me. He looked at me and said, completely matter-of-fact: “This is a hotel, not a church.” In that moment I realized just how much I still didn't understand about the world I'd walked into. It was funny, a little humbling, and one of the most clarifying things anyone said to me during that time.

Amy: Mine came a few years later, when the recession hit in 2008. The phones stopped ringing almost overnight. Even companies that could still afford to host events chose not to—for perception reasons. My boss, Emilie Abel, taught me that we couldn't lower our prices too much because that would weaken our market position and profitability. So we leaned hard into the wedding business instead, and it carried us through to the other side. Gramercy Park Hotel became one of the most sought-after wedding venues in the city. That lesson has stayed with me: don't abandon what you are in a downturn. Adapt, but protect the core.

Danielle: Standards set at the beginning become the baseline for everything that follows. When you work at that level of intention, you internalize a kind of muscle memory for excellence. You stop accepting “fine” when you know what great feels like. And luxury, I learned, isn't about exclusivity for its own sake—it's about making people feel genuinely seen.

Amy: It's all in the details - the Le Labo candle in the lobby, the Narciso Rodriguez uniforms on the front desk agents, the curated artwork. But it's also a smile and a confident welcome and anticipating your guest's needs before they voice them. That's the standard I've been working toward ever since.

What do you appreciate now that you didn't fully understand at the time?

Danielle: How rare it was. Not difficult. Impossible to replicate. The legacy of the Gramercy Park Hotel, to me, is the proof that when you are truly intentional about the way people interact with design—when every detail is considered, curated, and purposeful—it changes the way people show up in that space. It changes how they talk to each other, how they linger, how they feel. That was the lesson Ian was teaching, whether we knew we were learning it or not.

Amy:  I knew at the time that I was part of something special, but I don’t think that I appreciated how special it was until now. Looking back, the lessons instilled in me are lifelong, professionally and personally, and the connections formed were so pivotal. A few of our colleagues, James Stuart and Daemon O’Neil, were encouraging of me starting my own business. They had done the same and gave me advice and confidence.  And then of course the full circle moment of working with Danielle again now and partnering with Emilie on a recent social event.

And what does the Gramercy Park Hotel mean to you now, twenty years later?

Amy: The Gramercy Park Hotel opening was the most valuable experience in my career because of the timing of the opening (in my life and in NYC), Ian Schrager’s vision, and the incredible team he hired.

While we studied hospitality at Cornell, the hands-on experience at GpH taught me the true meaning of the word - the idea of anticipatory service and all of the steps that need to happen before a guest walks into an event or hotel lobby.  It taught me that work would be hard but that it could also be fun.  We had so many laughs, nights out, fun memories. 

I’ll forever be grateful for the Gramercy Park Hotel, for my bosses and mentors, Emilie and Sandra, for the lessons learned and carried forward, and for Danielle for bringing me into that world.

Danielle: It's where I cemented my love for hospitality. Full stop.

I came in at 24, relatively green, full of enthusiasm and not entirely sure what I was walking into. And what I found was a place that demanded your full presence — not just professionally, but personally. It asked you to show up completely, and in return it gave you something you couldn't have found anywhere else.

It taught me that hospitality, at its best, is not just about logistics. It's about how you make people feel. That the most luxurious thing you can offer someone is the sense that they truly matter — not in a performative way, but genuinely. That lesson is the foundation of everything Amy has built, and I’m now a part of again. 

Because in a way, GPH gave me more than a career chapter. It gave me my business partner. I called Amy up from Washington D.C. because I knew she needed to be part of what we were building — and twenty years later, we're still building together.

That's what Gramercy Park Hotel means to me. It's where it all began.