A hotelier from a bygone era is returning to Shanghai after an absence of more than five decades, with Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels opening a Peninsula hotel on the waterfront Bund district.
The Peninsula Shanghai would open in the autumn, probably in October, as part of the renaissance taking place on the Bund, company officials said. The exterior structure was completed on Friday.
The 15-storey hotel, still concealed by scaffolding, commands the northern end of the Bund. The project is being closely watched, as it will be the only new building on the famed stretch of land.
The hotel group has pledged that the building will be 'sympathetic' to the architecture of the Bund. 'It will fit into that area and make the Bund even more beautiful,' said Jean Forrest, general manager for marketing for Peninsula Hotels.
The company had several properties in Shanghai, following the merger of the Hongkong Hotel Co and Shanghai Hotels in 1923. They included the Palace Hotel, now the south building of the Peace Hotel, which the company relinquished in 1947.
'The Kalee, the Astor House, the Palace and the Majestic are names of hotels owned or operated by the company in a bygone area - a time often described as the city's golden age,' chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Sir Michael Kadoorie, said. His family lived in Shanghai from 1911 to 1948.