Ames Building set to become boutique hotel

Morgans Hotel Group said its hotel in the Ames Building will embody the avant-garde feel of its other properties. (ZARA TZANEV FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/File 2007)

The New York company that attracts celebrities to its chic hotels, including the Hudson in New York and the Delano in Miami Beach, has signed on to develop a boutique hotel in the historic Ames Building in downtown Boston.

Morgans Hotel Group is expected to disclose today that it will join with developers Ames Hotel Partners and Normandy Real Estate Partners to operate a hip modern hotel in the 1889 building that was Boston's first skyscraper.

The property, which will be known as The Ames Hotel, joins a growing list of luxury hotels coming to Boston. The W Boston hotel, which has been in the pipeline since 2006, will open in the Theatre District next year, for example.

Morgans said it will spend $75 million to turn the 14-story Ames building into a hotel with 115 guest rooms, a restaurant, a bar, and a gym. And while the company is mum on the decor of the hotel, which will open in 2009, it said it will embody the avant-garde feel of its other properties.

"We are really known for hotels with a design focus," Marc Gordon, the chief investment officer of Morgans Hotel Group, said in an interview. "We are talking about new, interesting, noteworthy, and edgy."

In September, The Rockwell Group, the New York design firm behind the W hotels and Nobu sushi restaurant, signed on to create the interior for the new Ames building. Rockwell said it planned to play up the classic structure of the Byzantine and Romanesque-style former office building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Justin D. Krebs, a Normandy principal, said in a statement the renovation would return "this landmark property to its former glory."

Each of the 10 hotels Morgans owns and operates has its own style. The Hudson in Manhattan has neon-lit escalators that take guests up 40 feet to the ivy-covered lobby.

"They have a reputation that people are following," said Reed Woodworth, vice president of PKF Consulting in Boston, which follows the hospitality industry. "The hotels are hip and chic. It's not the standard boutique-style hotel. They are high energy and tend to draw a younger crowd. They are a little bit more of a party hotel."

And celebrities hang out there, too. Hollywood stars like actress Eva Longoria Parker frequent the company's Los Angeles hotel, the Mondrian.

Woodworth said the Ames could become a party scene, too, especially with so many movies being shot in and around Boston these days, but questioned whether that alone would sustain the hotel operations.

"Movies being filmed here will bring the high-end celebrity types. But will that be enough to fill a hotel?" he asked.

Angel Jennings can be reached at ajennings@globe.com.