海外滩的改建工作本周跨越了一个重要里程碑──著名的和平饭店重新开业。外滩汇聚了上海一系列地标性建筑。
当 时名为华懋饭店(Cathay Hotel)的和平饭店在1929年建成时，由大亨沙逊(Victor Sassoon)兴建的这座充分体现了装饰艺术的公寓酒店立刻成为了世界最知名的建筑之一。这座酒店有着绿色的金字塔型屋顶，其房间装饰之奢华即使在细微 处也有体现，比如浴室的刮脸镜都是用有装饰性浮雕的玻璃制成的。酒店大堂的爵士乐队为上海的爵士时代奠定了基础。
但这座酒店的内部装饰即 使没有在第二次世界大战期间毁于日本军人之手，也在随后那些年月里因上海市政府管理不善而日渐凋零。几十年来，坐落在上海外滩的和平饭店似乎成了显示上海 郁郁不得志状态的标志性建筑，外滩汇聚了一批具有历史意义的欧洲风格建筑，从它们身上可以看到上海昔日的辉煌。
即使在上海其他地区的豪华建筑如雨后春笋般涌现出来之际，和平饭店依然停留在过往的时代，酒店服务不周，内部装饰单调。而此时与和平饭店一江之隔的上海浦东已经高楼大厦林立。
现在，和平饭店的改建工程为其弥补失去的时光创造了机会。自2007以来一直关门的这座饭店本周将试营业，酒店重新开张后的名称将是费尔蒙和平饭店(Fairmont Peace Hotel)。
酒店将有270间现代化客房，广告上打出的起步房价约为350美元，而酒店分别为印度、美国和英国等国风格的“九国套房”以及位于十楼的总统套房则有着比起步房价高上好几倍的房价。和平饭店还新添了游泳池和水疗中心。
主 要由卡塔尔和沙特人做后台老板的费尔蒙来福士国际酒店集团(Fairmont Raffles Hotels International)在世界各地经营酒店，其酒店品牌分别有费尔蒙、来福士(Raffles)、瑞士酒店(Swissotel)和纽约的广场饭店 (Plaza)和伦敦的萨沃伊(Savoy)酒店等。
对和平饭店而言，改建工程就是让酒店的运营恢复往昔的荣光。和平饭店总经理纳马尼(Kamal Naamani)说，这根本不是 壁和地板的事。他来上海前曾在迪拜经营一家费尔蒙酒店。
但费尔蒙来福士国际酒店集团在和平饭店的经营上无法自作主张。根据合同，它要与上海市政府下属的锦江集团分享和平饭店的管理权。和平饭店以前就是由这家公司经营的，锦江集团此前对和平饭店的改动被评论家视为效果不理想。
在周三举行的新闻发布会上，锦江集团的郑深根(音)在谈到和平饭店未来的“可持续发展”时，听上去更像一位官僚，而不是酒店经营者，他大谈酒店的改建工作严格遵守了市政府历史专家们的建议。
锦江集团的上市子公司上海锦江国际酒店(集团)股份有限公司对其投资者说，它在和平饭店的改建工程上投入了约6,500万美元。这是和平饭店改建支出方面迄今唯一对公众披露的财务数据。
由 于外滩地区重新恢复了沿江步行区，这里突然之间汇聚了众多高档酒店。瑞士的斯沃琪集团(Swatch Group AG)最近就在和平饭店旁边盖起了自己的酒店。半岛酒店集团(Peninsula)在外滩的酒店开在了距和平饭店仅几步之遥的地方。由上海总会大楼 (Shanghai Club)改建的外滩华尔道夫酒店(Waldorf-Astoria)即将竣工，参与这所酒店经营的中方单位也是锦江集团。
和平饭店是外滩地区最具传奇色彩的酒店。多年来，世界许多知名酒店集团都曾向锦江集团表达过想管理这座酒店的愿望。
费尔蒙来福士国际酒店集团的首席运营长卡希尔(Chris J. Cahill)对《华尔街日报》说，我们在改建堪称历史遗产的酒店方面有很多经验，尤其是在加拿大。他这里说的是该公司对加拿大各地铁路酒店的改建。
卡希尔说，具备能力是一方面，我们需要的是修复而不受翻新。
酒店设计顾问公司Hirsch Bedner Associates的负责人之一卡尔(Ian Carr)在2009年4月的一次吹风会上曾说，改建和平饭店的任务是“修复和重新阐释”。记者们在会上首次了解到业主方计划如何改建有历史意义的和平饭店。
卡 尔说，他的团队光收集有关和平饭店最初外观景象的信息就用了六到八个月。他们查阅了沙逊家族保存在巴哈马群岛的档案资料，研究了工程事务所巴马丹拿 (Palmer & Turner)的档案文件，查看了上海市政府的档案，甚至参考了上世纪30年代的杂志，以感受难受那个时代的特色。沙逊家族在1949年以后定居巴哈马， 而和平饭店最初就是由巴马丹拿修建的。
除了多年来先后刷上的多达25层油漆，和平饭店内几乎没有什么东西能帮助卡尔的团队找回酒店过去的 样子，因为酒店原来的大多数装置要么被毁，要么被抢，要么多年下来已经被搞得面目全非了。卡尔说，原有客房里的东西几乎什么都没剩下，不仅原来的家俱找不 到，连浴室里的水龙头也不是原装的了。
和平饭店在以往岁月中陆续添加的一些装置也加大了酒店改建工作的难度。比如说，中国电信一条粗大的 海底中继线就安家在和平饭店的大堂里，改建时当然得把它隐藏起来。卡尔的团队希望保留大堂的前台，以接待他们预计酒店开业后每天会大量前来的旅游团，游客 们进和平饭店就是为了看一眼大堂里的银色壁画和酒店那顶端镶着黄色玻璃的大厅。
Restoration of Shanghai's parade of landmark buildings--the Bund--passes a key milestone this week as the famed Peace Hotel throws open its doors.
When it was completed in 1929, tycoon Victor Sassoon's art deco hotel-residence, known as the Cathay Hotel, was among the most famous properties worldwide. Sassoon lived beneath its green pyramid roof and outfitted rooms with luxurious details such as Lalique glass in shaving mirrors. The hotel's downstairs Jazz Bar set the stage for Shanghai's jazz age.
But what of the building interior wasn't destroyed at the hands of the Japanese military during World War II was left to decay under mismanagement by Shanghai's Communist government in the years that followed. For decades, the Peace Hotel seemed to stand as the cornerstone to mark Shanghai's unrealized opportunities on the historic Bund, a riverfront of European architecture that marked a bygone era.
Even as the rest of Shanghai was putting on the Ritz - and sprouting skyscrapers across the river - the Peace Hotel remained stuck in a time warp of dismal service and drab interior.
Now, its restoration promises to make up for lost time. Closed since 2007, it is launching a soft opening this week as Fairmont Peace Hotel.
It will feature 270 modernized guest rooms with advertised prices starting around $350, while nine 'nation-suites' styled in Indian, American and British themes, plus a new 10th floor presidential suite, will be priced at multiples of that level. A new annex will feature a pool and spa.
Fairmont, backed primarily by Qatar and Saudi owners, runs the hotels world-wide under the Fairmont, Raffles and Swissotel nameplates, as well as New York's Plaza and London's Savoy.
In Shanghai, the job is to restore hotel operation to the past glory. 'It's not all about the walls and the floors,' said the general manager, Kamal Naamani, who previously ran a Fairmont hotel in Dubai.
But Fairmont Raffles won't have a free run. The management contract is split 50-50 with the Shanghai government's Jin Jiang Group, the same state-run firm responsible for years of lackluster service and previous renovations that reviewers said missed the mark.
At a press conference Wednesday, Jin Jiang's Zheng Shengen sounded more the bureaucrat than hotelier in discussing the Peace's future 'sustainable growth,' strict adherence to instructions from municipal historical experts and management through difficulties in renovation.
In the only financial disclosure about the costs, Jin Jiang International Hotels (Group) Co., a listed group subsidiary, has told investors it spent around $65 million on the renovation works.
With a restored waterfront promenade, the Bund is suddenly crowding with high-end hotels. Switzerland's Swatch Group AG (UHR.VX, SWGAY) recently occupied an adjacent spot with its own hotel. The Peninsula opened just steps away. And the Waldorf-Astoria is putting finishing touches on its renovation of the Shanghai Club further down the Bund, also in partnership with Jin Jiang Group.
The Peace Hotel is the most legendary. And Jin Jiang for years entertained offers to manage the hotel by many of the world's leading firms.
'We've had so much experience restoring heritage hotels, in Canada in particular,' Chris J. Cahill, chief operating officer of Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, told The Wall Street Journal, referring to the firm's work on former railway hotels around the country.
'It's one thing to have the ability,' Cahill said. 'It's the experience restoring instead of renovating.'
The mandate was to 'restore and reinterpret,' Ian Carr, a principal at Hirsch Bedner Associates, said in an April 2009 briefing that offered reporters the first inklings of what was planned with the historic property.
Carr explained how his team spent six to eight months just gathering information about what the hotel originally looked like. They sorted through records Sassoon's family maintained in the Bahamas where he resettled after the communists took control of Shanghai, parsing files at the architecture firm Palmer & Turner that built the original structure, looking at the Shanghai Municipal archives and even turning pages of 1930s magazines to get a feel for the times.
Aside from as many as 25 layers of paint accumulated over the years, the designers had little inside the hotel to guide them as most fittings were destroyed, looted or repurposed over the years. 'There's hardly anything left of the guestrooms,' Carr said. 'There was no furniture, no bathroom faucets.'
Construction was complicated by installations of earlier years: a massive China Telecom undersea trunk line, for instance, lands in Shanghai inside the hotel lobby, and of course had to be hidden. Designers sought to preserve a hotel front desk feel yet accommodate what they expect to be hundreds of tour groups likely to wander in daily for peeks at the lobby's silver frescos and rediscovered rotunda topped with yellow stain glass.