Sunset Tower - Restoration and Operation By Jeff Klein

Restoration and Operation By Jeff Klein

The Lancaster Group purchased the hotel from de Savary in 1992, renaming it the Argyle. In 2004, Jeff Klein purchased the hotel. Klein hired designer Paul Fortune to renovate the hotel, adding more modern amenities, and restored its original name. In 2006, Toronto's The Globe and Mail reviewed the renovated Sunset Tower and noted: "This isn't a place that needs to declare itself 'hip' because its grand history speaks for itself—and has been successfully carried forward to the present." London's Daily Mail noted: "Bill Murray and Penélope Cruz are often spotted in the restaurant, where, on most nights, you can hear 84-year-old Page Cavanaugh, who played for Sinatra and Doris Day in the 1940s, tinkle the ivories."

As part of the 2006 restoration, the Tower Bar was reconfigured to have a more turn of the century ambience. After the Tower Bar opened in 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that it had become one of the trendiest in Los Angeles: "On a recent night at the intimate Tower Bar, Jennifer Aniston dines 10 feet away from Joaquin Phoenix and white-coated waiters weave between tables like players in a Broadway musical. A $155 bottle of Pinot Noir is uncorked here, chilled oysters delivered there and a bow given every now and then." The New York Times also reported on the transformation of the hotel: "The striped silk-and-walnut Tower Bar restaurant is already a retro clubhouse for the mature Hollywood set (think Brian Grazer and Barbara Walters), complete with $13 martinis and the octogenarian former Sinatra pianist Page Cavanaugh tickling the ivories. On a Friday night in mid-December, Anjelica Huston and Courtney Love swanned by to dine with a 30-something crowd far more sophisticated than the teenyboppers roaming Sunset Boulevard outside." Other celebrities visiting the Tower Bar include Sean Penn, Victoria Beckham, Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lopez. Dmitri Dmitrov, a 60-year-old Macedonian immigrant with Rudolph Valentino hair, is the Tower Bar's maître d’hôtel. Dmitrov is a sphinxlike figure who knows everything and says nothing. In the six years since Klein, following a suggestion from the designer Tom Ford, rescued Dmitrov from a fading career at drearily elegant places like a local Russian restaurant that featured a harpist, ice swans and a caviar menu, he has become a Hollywood institution. In February 2007, the New York Post reported that the hotel's front desk manager was nearly fired when Britney Spears tried to book three rooms. Owner Jeff Klein was reportedly overheard yelling at the manager, "If that piece of trailer trash so much as enters my driveway, you are fired. She can't come here with all my chic guests, she'll ruin the place." Also in 2007, Sean "Diddy" Combs showed up with an entourage to attend a Golden Globes party, and was told his name wasn't on the list. When Combs was reported to have become "verbally abusive," owner Jeff Klein personally asked Combs to leave. When Klein said he would call the police if Combs did not leave, the New York Post reported that Combs was heard shouting, "Just try it - I'll spend the rest of my life hunting you down!" In February 2009, Vanity Fair hosted its Oscar party at the Sunset Tower.