Rooftop bars are like Vegas pools: expect to pay out.
The new Thompson hotel, which opened in June on First Avenue and Stewart Street, makes no bones about its target audience on its website: “Where innovators, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists thrive… on the cusp of Seattle’s downtown evolution.”
Known for its private-club-style hotels from New York to London featuring amenities like a cigar terrace with a retractable roof, lobbies with fireplaces and fur throws, and Vogue-perfect infinity rooftop pools, Thompson seems to custom-design their places for the style-conscious executive wanting to partake in an elegant martini or two before adjourning upstairs to do coke off every surface of that luxury marble bath.
Now the high-end hotelier is after Seattle tech money. But unlike the fashion, finance, and film worlds that Thompson usually caters to, the tech industry prides itself on shying away from flash. How to get them to spend their REI allowance?
Give them an awesome view from the highest hotel bar in the city, the Thompson hopes. Both the rooftop bar 12 floors up, the Nest, and the lobby restaurant, Scout, are the work of Josh Henderson and the Huxley Wallace Collective, who are also behind Westward/Little Gull and a slew of new restaurants, including Bar Noroeste and Great State Burger.