At a time in our competitive industry when outside-the-box thinking is all but a requirement, the professionals featured by HOTELS can inspire you to think differently. This week, it’s Harry Harris, founder of development company, SUSD. Last week: Marc Rahola, founder of Spain’s OD Group, who sees opportunities for growth in good times and bad. Stay tuned for other profiles of hoteliers challenging the status quo — they’re all featured our HOTELS People Issue.
Harry Harris is a man whose passion has found its time. Casually dressed, sitting quietly with a coffee and a crossword in the rooftop poolside terrace of The Curtain, London’s latest private members’ club and hotel in the heart of trendy, diverse Shoreditch, he blends right in.
His passion is for creating distinctive places and his style suits the current trend for all things community – co-working, co-living, curated socializing and a certain vibe, rooted in the local area. “Hotels and clubs have always been in my blood. They’re part of me,” says the founder of development company, SUSD.
The Curtain, for which Harris found the site, assembled the debt and was the developer, is the first London management venture for Gansevoort Hotel Group, and Michael Achenbaum has overseen every design detail. The name comes from its proximity to the Curtain Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse built in 1577 and the premier venue for Shakespeare’s theater company. Its remains were discovered in 2012.
Opened in October 2017, it is a hotel, restaurant, live music venue and private members club. It has 120 rooms and suites, a 24-hour gym, treatment rooms and 6,000 square feet of event space, including a ballroom and a screening room.
“Restaurant” somewhat undersells the food and beverage offer, which is an offshoot of Harlem’s famed Red Rooster from acclaimed chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson. Open to the public, it’s faithful to the original, offering Southern soulfood with cornbread and fried yardbird and a weekly Gospel Brunch.
“He is incredibly knowledgeable about the construction and development process in London,” Michael Achenbaum says of Harris. “We had a lot of fun doing this together; it was certainly not the easiest of development deals. Harry did the best in very difficult conditions. For us to be friends and even to be able to laugh about it says a lot about the way he handles himself.
“The way he’s been able to work through numerous roadblocks, some governmental, some private sector… It’s not easy to develop in NYC but London has been particularly instructive about the things that can pop up – ordnance insurance, Museum of London inspections, things that you just don’t run into in New York. Working through some very specific kinds of issues, you need guidance from someone who’s done it before, and Harry fit the bill.”
Harris’ other London project, The Devonshire Club, is “where Mayfair Chic meets East End style.” The main building houses the club and a 68-room boutique hotel. SUSD was developer and designer.
External branding is discreet at both properties. “If you’re a private members club,” he says, “you want it to be calm and subtle. I wouldn’t say exclusive, that’s not what we’re trying for; it’s more about inclusivity, a community. London’s a very competitive space for all sorts of reasons. At the Devonshire Club, members really have a sense of ownership.”
The road to here, beyond
An architect by training, he has always had a strong interest in design and construction, although his entry into the profession was circuitous. He liked technical drawing at school but left at 16 with no qualifications. One day he answered an ad from an architects practice for someone “good at math and drawing” and from there went to night school to get the qualification that allowed him to go to university. He tells the story of meeting an elderly craftsman working on the roof of a building with a set of special hammers to fold the lead sealant, which made him appreciate that “when you’re in an office somewhere working on a drawing, someone actually has to put that together.”
He met the Achenbaums, father and son, through a business partner. It was a joint decision not to brand the property Gansevoort. “The people that live, work and hang out in Shoreditch are definitely after authenticity, and the Gansevoort brand could be seen as slightly corporate,” he says.
The Curtain has been well received because of its understanding of the area, which is arts and music driven. Harris is proud of the live performance space, which features everything from poetry to rap and burlesque to beatboxing. He is also “super proud of the diversity and ethnic culture the Red Rooster brings, with the cooking and the art, the music and the culture. Locally, there’s a real appreciation that we’re celebrating that culture.”
The next planned venture is another hotel and private members club based around a historical building on 10 acres of Thames riverfront in an area designated “outstanding natural beauty.” The house is known locally as The Grotto, and the intention is a 63-bed hotel with 12 lodges of modern design, set among trees, with two bars, a restaurant, spa, indoor and outdoor pools and tennis courts. They are considering joint membership with the Devonshire Club.
Harris isn’t sure the concept of The Grotto is remarkably different from, for example, Soho Farmhouse, but it will be specific to the locality. “Soho House has the luxury of rolling out the brand as it’s so strong, but ours are more bespoke,” Harris says, adding the he is a great admirer of Soho House founder Nick Jones for inventing a new asset class.
Harris also expresses excitement about a potential site he had seen the day before on Britain’s South Coast, showing Achenbaum a photograph. “You could be in California on that beach,” he says, and off they went to talk more about it.