Firmdale Hotels broke ground yesterday on its hotel planned for 86 Warren, and this is the first look at a rendering. DOB plans on file call for 11 stories at 135 feet, with 44,000 square feet of hotel and 11,000 of residential and construction should take a little more than two years. (If you want a preview, and even if you don’t, you must watch this amazing film on the construction of the Crosby Street Hotel, made by artist Jean Roman Seyfried using time lapse photography over two years.) Hopefully more TK soon on building amenities and other drawings, but here’s what we know in the meantime.

Firmdale is Kit and Tim Kemp — a husband and wife team who built their first boutique hotel, the Dorset Square, in London in 1985 and have gone on to open seven others in the UK (Kit is the creative director and an interior designer with gobs of accolades, and Tim is the numbers guy). They opened the Crosby Street Hotel here in 2010, and the Whitby in 2017. The architect for Warren Street (will it be the Warren Street Hotel??) is Paul Taylor of Stonehill Taylor, who also did the Crosby and the Whitby, and I assume Kit Kemp will be doing the interiors. (That’s her talking about the interiors of the Ham Yard Bar and Restaurant, below.)

There’s bound to be a restaurant or even two inside this one — the Crosby and the Whitby each have their own bar/restaurant. (A friend of mine from Texas makes it a habit to have tea at the Whitby whenever she’s in town.)