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The Hotel Marcel in New Haven photographed on May 13, 2022.
The Hotel Marcel in New Haven photographed on May 13, 2022.
A drone photo of the nearly-finished Hotel Marcel in the former Pirelli Building at 500 Sargent Drive in the Long Wharf section of New Haven.
Hotel Marcel architect and owner Bruce Becker at the entrance to the hotel in New Haven May 13, 2022.
Hotel Marcel architect and owner Bruce Becker, left, and General Manager Michael Scandariato at the bar area of the BLDG restaurant in the new hotel in New Haven May 13, 2022.
Hotel Marcel architect and owner Bruce Becker on the roof of the hotel in New Haven May 13, 2022. Solar panels are part of the net-zero design of the hotel.
The BLDG restaurant on the first floor of the Hotel Marcel in New Haven photographed on May 13, 2022.
A corner king bedroom in the Hotel Marcel in New Haven with views of the harbor photographed on May 13, 2022.
A room in the Hotel Marcel in New Haven photographed on May 13, 2022.
Hotel Marcel architect and owner Bruce Becker in a stairway of the hotel in New Haven May 13, 2022, kept to its original board form concrete design.
A control panel for operating the lighting in a room in the Hotel Marcel in New Haven.
The sunken lounge on the first floor of the Hotel Marcel in New Haven.
A drone photo of the nearly-finished Hotel Marcel in the former Pirelli Building at 500 Sargent Drive in the Long Wharf section of New Haven.
A drone photo of the nearly-finished Hotel Marcel in the former Pirelli Building at 500 Sargent Drive in the Long Wharf section of New Haven.
NEW HAVEN — The striking, Brutalist — and very, very visible — Marcel Breuer-designed Pirelli Building that has stood empty for decades next to Ikea at the junction of Interstates 95 and 91 is empty no more.
Vacant since soon after Pirelli Tire Co.’s 1988 purchase of the Armstrong Tire Co., which opened the building as its headquarters in 1970, the building this past week was a noisy beehive of last-minute preparations, full of the sounds of vacuums and occasional hammering and power tools.
But on Monday it will settle down and open — just in time for Yale University’s May 23 commencement — as the hippest, most sustainable and eco-friendly new hotel in town.
Say hello to Hotel Marcel, part of the Tapestry Collection by Hilton.
“We’re excited,” said architect and co-owner Bruce Redman Becker of Becker + Becker in Westport. “Yale is a big part of our community” as is Yale New Haven Hospital, and “New Haven is underserved” when it comes to hotels, he said.
The all-electric, 165-room hotel in the city’s Long Wharf area will be New Haven’s third-largest when it opens, right behind the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale with 306 rooms and Marriot’s Courtyard New Haven with 207 rooms.
Even before it opens, it’s one of just a dozen or so hotels in the United States to have the Green Building Council’s LEED Platinum efficiency rating. It aims to be the first net-zero hotel in the nation — meaning it generates all of its power on-site — although Becker said it could take a year for that to be certified and official.
Hotel Marcel, with an array of solar panels on the roof and atop parking canopies in the parking lot, already has received a Passive Building certification, which means it uses 80 percent less energy than a typical U.S. hotel.
The goal is to use solar power to generate its own electricity for lighting, heating, cooling and hot water, Becker said.
Named after Breuer, the renowned, Bauhaus-affiliated Modernist architect who originally designed it — and with a full architectural story’s worth of wide-open spaces between its second floor and the floor above it — Hotel Marcel is nothing if not iconic.
It’s listed on both the Connecticut and National registers of historic places. Its Modernist design — in a location passed by about 140,000 vehicles per day — was among the final controversies to come out of the urban renewal-era administration of former Mayor Richard C. Lee, who personally matched-up Armstrong both with the site and the architect.
It actually also was named the ugliest building in Connecticut in a 2018 article in Business Insider.
But inside, it’s full of placid, muted earth tones courtesy of design partner Dutch East Design, with a curated collection of art on the walls, both public and in its rooms, that Westport artist Kraemer Sims Becker — Bruce Becker’s wife — pulled together, with an emphasis on female artists.
And it feels pretty homey, in an upscale, Museum of Modern Art sort of way.
“My feeling is that it works better as a hotel than it ever could as an office building. ... You have great access and great views,” both of the city and Yale on one side and New Haven Harbor and Long Island Sound on the other, said Bruce Becker.
Why did Becker, a respected Westport architect whose other buildings have included the 360 State St. apartment building in New Haven and the 777 Main St. (former Hartford Bank) building in Hartford, want to get involved in the rebirth of such a long-mothballed building?
It just grew out of driving by over the years and asking the same sort of “I wonder what’s going on with that building?” questions that everyone else asks, he said.
“I’m passionate about mid-century modern architecture,” said Becker, who grew up in New Canaan “in a house with Marcel Breuer chairs” in it.
“This building by Marcel Breuer is clearly his most visible work of architecture,” Becker explained last week. “After driving by it for all this time, I thought, ‘Maybe this is something I could do something about,’” he said. “... It was just a shame and a waste of resources to just have it sitting there.”
He spent about a year talking to Ikea, which had initially demolished a part of the building’s low-rise section, which had been used for research facilities, and for the most part had used the rest of the building as a giant billboard from which to hang advertisements.
Becker’s group took control of the 500 Sargent Drive building on Dec. 31, 2019.
“It was much easier to execute as a billboard than a hotel,” he said. And while it’s been satisfying, “Had someone else done it, I would have been fine.”
To Ikea’s credit, they weren’t willing to just accept anything when it came to design ideas, Becker said.
“We’re very glad to have ourselves affiliated with Hilton — part of the Tapestry Collection,” which includes boutique hotels “that reflect local culture,” Becker said.
True to form, Hotel Marcel, among other things, will feature some local products in its BLDG Restaurant — and will sell East Haven-made Foxon Park sodas and ice cream from Arethusa Farm in Bantam, among other products, in a “grab-and-go” store for guests to take out a picnic or up to their rooms.
It also has Breuer-designed “Cesca chairs” — named after Breuer’s daughter, Francesca — in many of its rooms.
The hotel is operated by Remington Hospitality, which Becker called “one of the top hotel operators in the country” — and will have more than 8,000 square feet of meeting space.
The two things that are most unique about Hotel Marcel are its design heritage and its sustainability, Becker said.
But it was a long road getting there, with asbestos and other 50-year-old problems to be taken care of — and that beautiful interior essentially was built from scratch inside the shell of the former office building.
Sustainability “is something that I’m increasingly interested in all of my work,” said Becker, who, with his wife, comprise a two-Tesla family — and his is not the first alternative-fueled vehicle he’s driven.
“I think most architects are keenly aware of global warming” and “architects are trying to pivot to make each of our buildings part of the solution instead of part of the problem,” said Becker, who also happens to be chairman of the Electrical Vehicle Club of Connecticut. “I think there is going to be a quick shift to all-electric.”
Some of Becker’s other buildings, including 360 State St., employ the use of fuel cells, although they still use fossil fuels, he said.
But “I think everyone is trying to move as quickly as possible away from fossil fuels,” and virtually everything inside Hotel Marcel, including the kitchen and the laundry, are 100 percent electric.
Becker’s own house in Westport, converted from an older, historic building, also is an all-electric house, he said.
“Believe it or not, it’s easier to finance a project like this,” with financing available through the Green Bank, among other places, he said, and “it’s easier for us to run in the black with this project.”
The solar panels both atop the building and on canopies installed in the parking lot — more than 1,000 of them — produce about 550,000 kilowatt hours a year of energy, which is stored in batteries on-site, Becker said. The panels were commissioned in January, he said.
According to a dashboard app on Becker’s phone, the building’s solar panels currently collect about 216 kilowatts of energy on overcast days, he said. “The building’s only using 168 kw,” he said.
“The solar canopies actually are ingenious, because people like covered parking,” Becker said. They’re ecologically sustainable and “your car doesn’t bake in the sun.”
On Friday, dozens of workers under the direction of General Manager Michael Scandariato were working to get Hotel Marcel ready and make everything perfect for its debut, with work going on simultaneously on multiple floors.
Scandariato said that while the eighth and ninth floors “are coming a bit later,” everything on floors 1-7 will be ready to go.
“We have the entire weekend,” Scandariato said. “This team has been great. Everybody is fully committed and thrilled to be here.”
Mark Zaretsky, a Chicago native and longtime New Haven resident, is an award-winning reporter and music writer for the New Haven Register and Hearst Connecticut Media. His beats include East Haven and Branford, regional issues and occasional blues and roots music stories. He also makes a point of knowing where all the good ethnic and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, bars and bakeries are -- and is an unapologetic Cubs, Bears, Blackhawks and Bulls fan. In addition to his work as a journalist, Zaretsky is a front man for The Cobalt Rhythm Kings and The Chicago Dawgs and occasionally performs with Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Mark Naftalin and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.