NYC Hospitality Innovator Sponsored By Heineken: The Wythe Hotel's Peter Lawrence, Encouraging Us To Wake Up In Williamsburg

[The mural in the lobby was designed by Nick Walker] “But I also think people move to Manhattan for different reasons than they did twenty years ago. I mean I go in and have dinner and go (very rarely now) but I’m genuinely astonished by the people I’m sitting next to at my favorite restaurants and how different they were 15 years ago when my wife and I were sitting next to our friends." Ugh let's not even get into it. So sad. “It seems to be getting a little leached out of Manhattan to the benefit of Brooklyn, and the however you describe it, the grit I guess, that interesting abrasive stuff that used to be so apparent in Manhattan just isn’t anymore.” Is Brooklyn the new Manhattan? “Um…I don’t think Manhattan but I think that if you trace this - and it’s happening all over the world - artist progression into abandoned industrial neighborhoods and then revitalizing them and then those neighborhoods being gentrified, yes we are definitely part of that progression. So Soho is as done as you can be in that progression I think.” It’s like Time Square or Disneyland. “Yeah at this point sadly, it’s like a big external mall in many ways – especially down Broadway. And we can also say Brooklyn is past its peak too, and we’ve jumped the shark and are on our downward spiral." I love that term “jump the shark.” Do you believe that about Williamsburg? “I think it’s just different. I think that, what I really think is that every piece of the gentrification, whatever name you want to give the process, is perfect for someone, now we’ve passed the point where it’s perfect for lots of the artists that needed free space or lots of space or cheap space.” And Brooklyn in general? “I think there are lots of places in Brooklyn you can still find that you just need to push out a little further. Williamsburg is definitely past that point. But now it’s interesting to a whole other group of people that wouldn’t have come here in 1986, so they’re discovering it on their terms now – it’s just as interesting.”