New Hybrid Hotel And Co-Working Brand Will Open First Location In D.C. This Spring
A hospitality company owned by Chinese real estate billionaire Ka Shui Lo is rolling out a new brand combining a hotel with a co-working space, and it has chosen D.C. as its launching pad.
The brand, Eaton Workshop, will debut with a 209-room hotel at the former Four Points Sheraton at 1201 K St. NW, the company announced Monday.
Slated to open early spring 2018, Eaton D.C. will also include a 370-person co-working space, a 182-person event space, a 50-seat movie theater, a restaurant and bar, a speakeasy, a coffee shop and juice bar, and a wellness center.
Eaton Workshop, owned by Lo's Great Eagle Holdings and run by his daughter, Katherine Lo, plans to open its second location in Hong Kong next summer. It has additional locations planned in San Francisco and Seattle.
Great Eagle Holdings acquired the D.C. property, formerly a 265-room Four Points Sheraton, from The JBG Cos. for $69M in 2014. The new owner dropped the original flag and operated the property as Twelve and K Hotel before renovating the building this year.
Chef Tim Ma, the founder of D.C.-area restaurants Kyirisan and Water & Wall, is creating the new restaurant, and Columbia Room co-founder Derek Brown is opening the speakeasy, which will be accessed through a wall of books in a library near the hotel lobby.
The Eaton brand aims to bring together artists, journalists and other creative types by giving them opportunities to practice their crafts in a collaborative environment. The brand also has a mission for social progress, as its creator described in a series of press materials.
“Each step in realizing Eaton stems from my goal of cultivating the ultimate utopian gathering place for global innovators and creatives who seek to change the world,” Katherine Lo said in the press release. “This brand is the manifestation of me ‘following my bliss,’ so others can follow theirs. Recent political events make our first hotel in D.C. that much more trenchant. The Eaton that we are creating will be a safe space and sanctuary for all: international, people of color, LGBTQ and more."
