As we look ahead to the coming year, these are some of the most important new event and meeting venues slated to open, bringing options for everything from cocktail parties and conferences, to business dinners and corporate meetings. Here's a preview of the hotels, restaurants, bars, and other spaces the event industry will be talking about in 2012.
1. The opening for Hilton Worldwide's first Conrad property in New York was pushed back from December, and the hotel is now scheduled to open by February. Still in the works for the Conrad New York outpost are 463 rooms and more than 17,000 square feet of meeting space, which will include a grand ballroom with the capacity for 600 people. Danny Meyer's Union Square Events will be official food and beverage partner for the conference and event facilities.
2. The debut of Danny Meyer's fine-dining restaurant near the Conrad New York was also delayed and is now scheduled to open in January. The New American eatery, dubbed North End Grill for its physical address and cuisine focus, was designed by architecture firm Bentel & Bentel and will have a seafood-centric menu from executive chef and partner Floyd Cardoz. Nearby, Meyer also plans to open a second outpost of his popular barbecue joint Blue Smoke.
3. In May, Guy Gsell will open the doors to his outdoor educational park in Secaucus, New Jersey, known as Field Station: Dinosaurs. The 20-acre outdoor science site will house more than 30 life-size animatronic dinosaurs and also include games, workshops, and other activities for groups.
4. More developers are flocking to the Flatiron district to build hotels, and this year will bring the opening of the long-awaited NoMad Hotel. Scheduled to open in February, the boutique property will offer 168 rooms in a 12-story French Renaissance-style building as well as a bar, lounge, and dining room operated by Eleven Madison Park's executive chef Daniel Humm and manager Will Guidara
5. Just a few blocks away will be the permanent home for the Museum of Mathematics, an institution dedicated to the science of numbers and patterns. The 19,000-square-foot venue will occupy two levels of a building at the north end of Madison Square Park and offer permanent exhibit space as well as classroom space that the organization plans to rent out for private events.
6. Wyndham's 173-room Tryp Times Square hotel from Wyndham will open this month, providing 2,100 square feet of meeting space two blocks from the Javits Center. Three rooms can be used separately or combined. The largest, an 806-square-foot section, can accommodate 60 seated theater-style, 40 classroom-style, or 70 for receptions.
7. The New York location of popular modern Chinese restaurant Hakkasan is slated to open in the early half of this year. The site, which will sit just one block west of Times Square, will offer 200 seats and a bar in an 11,000-square-foot space designed by the same team that worked on the Miami and Abu Dhabi outposts.
8. Scheduled to open this month, Prandial is a 125-seat restaurant in the Flatiron district that will offer a 40-seat private dining room. The bilevel space, which will be furnished with stained oak accents and Chesterfield couches, will also have a lounge and an elevated dining room.
9. Expected to open in the spring is the Dead Rabbit, the latest financial district venture from the Poulakakos family, which also operates Harry's Café and other spots downtown. The bar, named for a mid-19th century Irish gang, will offer two rooms—one for pub-style brews and another for cocktails.
10. In late September, Wolfgang Zwiener announced that a fourth outpost of his much-lauded steak house will open inside the headquarters of The New York Times. Although no opening date is scheduled for Wolfgang's Steakhouse's theater district spot, Zwiener did reveal that the restaurant will be housed in the space that was recently occupied by high-end Italian eatery Montenapo.
