That’s great. I didn’t realize that you found out after wards.
We just started the project, and it was complete kismet. It was one of those weird things.

How much are you involved with Neverstop and does that part of the business ever mingle with your other businesses?
For the past couple of years I have not been as involved in the day-to-day. There’s a lot of creative cross-pollination that happens between the different companies. If I’m working on something for a client at Neverstop, oftentimes there is some kind of inspiration that interacts with the other companies. I’m really excited for the new office to be here in New York and to be more involved in that creative process. I really like working with clients, and oftentimes our clients at Neverstop turn out to be our same clients at Ace. It’s a natural kind of cross-pollination between the companies.

You’re involved with hotels, barber shops, creative agencies, music, and partnering with restaurants. Is there a particular area of business that you’re not a part of that you would like to be involved in, like film?
That’s a good question. I think film is interesting, more on the production side of it, but I don’t know. There’s not a hankering for it. I have other entrepreneurial ideas that I’ve been thinking about, concepts that I do intend on pursuing, but they’re more along the lines of a Rudy’s type of thing. That’s a tough thing, when you’re thinking about something, usually there are 10 other people around the world that are thinking the same thing.

It’s a race to be the first to market.
Either first to market, or sometimes you’re not first but you’ll do it a little better. Build a better mousetrap, as they say. But it’s really important to pursue it because if you’re thinking about it, clearly a lot of other people are too.

Let’s talk about the Ace Hotel in New York. What are some of the amenities? 246 rooms are going to be available?
Yeah, about 250 rooms. It’s a quirky old building, with strange layouts. The rooms are actually quite large, definitely by New York standards. By any hotel standard, our rooms are actually pretty generous. Because it’s a quirky old building, we didn’t just come in and knock everything down. We’ve got many different kinds of details. There are a large variety of room types, which from a sales standpoint, makes it more difficult for our staff to sell the hotel. The easiest thing is to have all the rooms the same and just sell them as the same experience. I think this is more exciting because we’ll get a lot of repeat guests that come, and one time you’ll be in one type of room and another time potentially in another type of room, you know?

And what’s the biggest room?
It’s just over 700 square feet. The largest rooms will be nice because they’ll have parquet wood floors, and they’ll be appointed with a lot of found furniture and antiques resembling someone’s cool apartment in New York. I think everyone will really like those rooms. I’m really excited about that. About a third of the rooms will have what we call maxibars, where we made a deal with Smeg Refrigerators from Europe. That will allow us to have a broader selection of items. There’ll be little mini kegs of Heineken Beer in there, a broader selection of liquors, sodas, and water. We’ll also be able to have ice cream, which you usually don’t have in a minibar. We’ll also probably have some meats. And if the guests wanted to keep something in it, if they brought back their dinner in a doggie bag, they could put it in the refrigerator.

What other amenities will the hotel have?
There’s a cool gallery thing that’s happening; there’s a dessert concept that’s happening, and a newsstand that’s in the works.

Will the hotel have a retail shop?
In terms of Ace retail, we may decide to do special objects or collaborations. For example, the ties that we’ll have for the front desk staff will also be available to purchase. There will be some objects and some stuff that’s related to the brand that we’ll have for sale at the front desk, so it will serve as a kiosk as well. We’ll also have a selection of music from Other Music. We reached out to them because we curated a selection of CDs.

What do you consider essential for traveling?
Essential? Well actually, what is funny and killing my back—I always take a tote filled with magazines and newspapers because when I’m on the airplane, that’s my only time to really read. It’s a wide selection of magazines. I love The Economist. I love fashion and art magazines. I always have a hard time throwing away the magazines because there is always something in each one of them that you want to keep.

So will Alex Calderwood “everstop?”
[Laughter] Yes, definitely…eventually. It would be nice to do a hotel in Europe or on the beach somewhere where you can focus on that hotel. I could envision some kind of scenario like that.

Judging from his answer sounds like Mr. Calderwood isn’t planning on slowing down any time soon.

We look forward to checking in with the Ace crew to keep you posted on the latest developments. Until then, the Ace New York is scheduled to open in March and is now taking reservations. For more information visit their site or call 212-679-2222.