Sleeping partners
COMING shortly to the City: the Thread- needle Street Hotel. The planners have blessed it and the Merchant Taylors are behind it. (Their hall will be next door.) It must face competition, though, for the City is suddenly sprouting hotels — two under construction and five more with planning permission. Behind them in the queue is a riverside hotel off Lower Thames Street, designed by Terry Farrell and featuring a rooftop bar. Between them they will offer 1,370 new bedrooms, which will be a test of the City's initiative, but it does bear out my theory that the place has turned its back 00 finance and is being reborn as a theme park. No wonder Harvey Nichols wants to join in. If there must be a Threadneedle Street Hotel, though, the obvious candidate is further down the street. As Lutyens told Montagu Norman, the Bank of England would be just the place for a the dansant.
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