Plaza Hotel to Make Room for Condos, Retail Space

The Plaza Hotel, the New York landmark where children’s book heroine Eloise romped and Neil Simon’s movie “Plaza Suite” unfolded, will close at the end of April and reopen next year as a condominium-hotel-retail complex, its owner said Wednesday.

At its reopening, scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2006, the hotel at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue that looks like a baroque stone wedding cake overlooking Central Park and Grand Army Plaza will contain about 200 luxury condominiums and 150 hotel rooms. The hotel now has 805 rooms.

The condominiums will range from one to four bedrooms on the top 12 floors of the building as well as some lower floors facing Central Park. The new hotel rooms will be on lower floors along the 58th Street side.

Miki Naftali, whose company Elad Properties paid $675 million in August for the hotel, said he was already fielding inquiries for condominiums.

In addition to “Plaza Suite,” the hotel’s movie appearances include Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” “The Way We Were,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Barefoot in the Park,” “Funny Girl” and “Cotton Club.”

The new Plaza Hotel also will contain 150,000 to 160,000 square feet on five or six levels for a department store.

Plans call for the Plaza Hotel’s Grand Ballroom, Palm Court and famed Oak Room restaurant -- which will close at the end of the month -- to remain intact without undergoing any structural changes.

Some of the hotel’s best-known guests include architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the Beatles and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.