Watergate Hotel Marks Topping Off, Set for Summer Opening

The once legendary Watergate Hotel – part of the equally legendary Watergate complex on the Potomac River, next to Georgetown – marked a ceremonial topping off of the hotel’s grand ballroom during its $125-million renovation March 19.

“Once it was the grandest luxury hotel,” said Jacques Cohen, principal of Euro Capital Properties, which is developing and owns the Watergate Hotel. The group intends to bring back the hotel’s mystique — with luxe appointments as well as a 12th floor rooftop.

The grand ballroom, the “hotel’s crown jewel,” said Rakel Cohen, the director of design and development of Euro Capital Properties,” will be called the Moretti Ballroom after the hotel’s designer Luigi Moretti, the Italian architect who created the complex’s contemporary and ground-breaking style in 1961. The hotel opened in 1965.

The Watergate complex on 2600 Virginia Ave. NW gained worldwide fame because of a burglary there of the offices of the Democratic National Committee and the ensuing investigation that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

The Cohens were joined by Mayor Muriel Bowser, Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans and Foggy Bottom advisory neighborhood commissioner William Kennedy Smith, M.D., costume designer Janie Bryant and hotel managing director Johnny So. Then, the headliners planted small Saliva seedlings in a potting table to indicate the rebirth of the hotel, which has been closed for seven years.

The Watergate Hotel will re-open summer 2015 with retro styling and luxuries that will include 340 guest rooms, whisky bar, fine dining and casual restaurants, grand ballroom, rooftop lounge, fitness center and spa.