News & Politics  |  Real Estate

Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania Avenue Hotel to Open in September

Photograph by Flickr user Elvert Barnes.

The renovation of the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue into a Trump-branded luxury hotel will be complete by September, “dramatically ahead of schedule,” the Trump Organization announced Monday. The 263-room hotel will open a little more than two years after construction began, and just months before a presidential election that could put the Trump Organization’s chairman in the White House two blocks away.

“There is nothing like it and we are so proud to have not only brought this incredible building back to life, but also to a position far greater than it ever was at its previous zenith,” Donald Trump, acting in his capacity as the head of his family real-estate firm, said in a press release.

Along with its standard rooms suites, the hotel will be capped by a 6,300-square-foot suite called the Trump Townhouse, which will feature its own private entrance and be one of the largest suites in any US hotel, the Trump Organization claims. The remodeling of the Old Post Office also includes a 13,200-square-foot “Presidential Ballroom,” a 10,000-square foot Ivanka Trump-branded spa and fitness facility, and a BLT Prime steakhouse. The restaurant, which will no doubt be heralded with Trumpian grandeur, is a replacement for the eateries the Trump Organization originally had in mind. Chefs José Andrés and Geoffrey Zakarian canceled their planned restaurants, citing Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric in his campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. (The Trump Organization is currently suing them in DC Superior Court.)

Various members of the Trump family have said the hotel and its amenities will be “extraordinary,” “opulent,” and “super-luxury.”

The Trump Organization says it has spent close to $200 million on the hotel conversion, though it has also received generous tax breaks since winning a General Services Administration contract for the building in 2012. The company received a $40 million historic-preservation tax credit in 2014, which GOP Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma cited as a piece of wasteful government spending.

Staff Writer

Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.