The Plaza Hotel Is Closing for a Four-Year Renovation, SILive Reports

The Plaza Hotel will close its doors for four years, SILive reported in October, citing a renovation at the Fifth Avenue landmark. City permit records confirm construction activity has already been underway at the building for years under its current owner, Qatar’s Katara Hospitality.

Why it matters

The Plaza is one of the most recognized hotel buildings in the country, and a four-year closure would be more than three times the length of the 14-month shutdown the hotel took during the pandemic, when it closed in March 2020 and reopened in May 2021. SILive’s report ties the new closure to renovation work rather than a financial distress event. We could not reach SILive’s full report directly through our tooling, so the closure length and timeline come from the outlet’s reporting, not our own documents. See our New York coverage for related Manhattan building stories, including our report on facade and permit disputes at the Sherry-Netherland.

Katara Hospitality, the hotel investment arm of the Qatar Investment Authority, bought the Plaza for a reported $600 million in 2018. Fairmont, an Accor brand, has managed the property throughout that ownership. A four-year closure on a trophy Fifth Avenue asset would keep one of Manhattan’s highest-profile hospitality buildings offline through roughly 2030, a long runway even for a full gut renovation.

The numbers

City permit data for the building, filed under BBL 1012747504 at 768 Fifth Avenue (Manhattan block 1274, lot 7504, BIN 1035253), shows the structure at 19 stories and lists an active general-construction job, M00858480, first permitted May 30, 2023. That job has been amended several times since, with the most recent amendment approved June 2, 2026, for a full renovation of residential condominium units in the tower. The filings run under the owner name “The Plaza” and the managing agent FirstService Residential, and they predate SILive’s reported four-year hotel closure by more than two years. The record does not say whether that job is connected to the hotel-wide closure SILive described, only that renovation permitting at the address has been active and renewing well before the closure was reported.

The Plaza is a mixed-use building, with condominium residences alongside the hotel operation, which is why DOB’s permit history for the address includes both hotel-side filings and separate residential-unit renovation jobs. Katara Hospitality bought the property for a reported $600 million in 2018, and Fairmont has managed it since.

What’s next

Neither SILive’s report nor the city’s permit data names a reopening date for the hotel operation itself. A renovation on this scale would likely require new DOB filings specific to hotel floors and public spaces, which are not yet in the city’s permit data as of this writing. We will track new filings at BIN 1035253 and any statement from Katara Hospitality or Fairmont on staffing and reopening plans.