Open Now
Open Now
Watch now

Goldman Sachs’ hotel the Conrad a respite for pandemic heroes

On any other Friday evening in mid-April, “The Loopy Doopy” rooftop bar at the Conrad Hotel in Battery Park City would be abuzz with Goldman Sachs bankers wrapping bright blue blankets around their shoulders while sipping overpriced happy-hour drinks. But this year, the bar is closed, and there are no bankers checked into the luxury …

On any other Friday evening in mid-April, “The Loopy Doopy” rooftop bar at the Conrad Hotel in Battery Park City would be abuzz with Goldman Sachs bankers wrapping bright blue blankets around their shoulders while sipping overpriced happy-hour drinks.

But this year, the bar is closed, and there are no bankers checked into the luxury suites downstairs. Instead, the Conrad is eerily quiet, with only a skeleton staff playing host to the health care workers sleeping there as they battle the COVID-19 pandemic that is ravaging city hospitals.

“It’s pretty weird,” one frontline caregiver who spent one night at the hotel told The Post. “It’s a nice hotel, but it’s not really open. It’s silent. It was kind of freaky.”

Goldman purchased the building that houses the hotel in 2006 while erecting its adjacent headquarters at 200 West St. Now, with the pandemic shutting down the globe, the Wall Street bank is putting its 463 luxury rooms to good use housing doctors, nurses and other medical staff, officials said.

Thanks in part to one-on-one discussions between Goldman Chief Executive David Solomon and Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta, the Conrad has been included in the hotel chain’s initiative with American Express to offer 1 million rooms nationwide to people on the front lines of the Big Apple’s coronavirus fight, sources told The Post.

Goldman owns the hotel and Hilton operates it.

The hotel started offering rooms to health care workers free of charge on April 13 through groups like The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, sources said. And it’s already booked 176 workers comprising a total of 939 room nights through May 10.

Forty-five workers were set to sleep there Friday night.

A basic room there costs about $550 a night and comes with a two-room suite, HDTVs in each room, rainfall showers, espresso machines and plush bedding.

But for people on the front lines of the crisis, which has taken the lives of more than 12,000 Big Apple residents, it’s just a pit stop on the way to another grueling shift.

“I didn’t know it was Goldman Sachs’ hotel,” said the worker who stayed at The Conrad this week. “Tell them thanks for the shower, I guess.”

Follow us on Google News