From a map of the city in 1942, the property can be traced back to a house called "Teynampet Villa", a government property allotted to P. S. Viswanatha Iyer, ICS, in the late 1940s. The area was then occupied by "Abbotsbury", a community hall, in the 1950s, which, soon after becoming the Tarapore property, was gifted to the Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, who later sold it to Magunta Subbarami Reddy, the founder of the Balaji Group of Hotels. The structure was demolished to build a luxury hotel with a helipad with about 320 rooms and 250,000 sq ft of commercial space. With the collaboration of the Oberoi Group of Hotels, Balaji Group of Hotels started building the structure in 1989 at a cost of 2.90 billion. However, after the murder of Magunta Subbarami Reddy, the group was caught in a financial crisis and the work on the project, initially named Magunta Oberoi, ceased in 2000 when about 75 percent of the work was complete. Consequently, the Oberois withdrew from the project the same year and it could not be completed in time. In 2006, the unfinished property was to be acquired by Lalit Suri, for 3.90 billion. However, after the death of Lalit Suri, Robust Hotels Private Limited, belonging to the Saraf Group, purchased the unfinished hotel development from IFCI and TFCI in mid-2007 and appointed Confluence, an international consultancy firm, to manage the completion of the project, which started remodelling the structure in 2008 and completed in February 2011. The retail space was bought from ICICI by Ramee Guestline Hotels. With the acquisition by the Saraf Group, the hotel was opened as Hyatt Regency Chennai on 8 August 2011.
The hotel
The hotel has a total of 325 rooms and covers about 600,000 sq ft, with more than 20,000 sq ft of versatile convention and event space and a sun-filled atrium lobby with water features and green landscaping. It also has a fitness centre, the Chic Lobby Lounge, Biscotti—the hotel's gourmet deli, Spice Haat – the 240-seat all-day-dining buffet restaurant and Stix serving authentic Chinese cuisine from the Sichuan region. The Spice Haat has five interactive kitchens across a space of over 9,000 sq ft. Each of the five live kitchens specialises in a specific culinary genre within the Indian Comfort food landscape. The Lobby Lounge, the 24-hour lounge, is set amidst the indoor green landscaping under the hotel atrium. The hotel also has an outdoor pool, which overlooks the city, and is set amidst custom-made art installations and lush landscaping. Additional hotel services and amenities include Regency Club, the Siddh Spa, the hotel's premium suites, specialty restaurant and a bar. The hotel also houses one of the largest collections of publicly displayed art installations in the country created by more than 40 national and international artists.
The mall
The first three floors, including half the ground floor and the first floor and the whole of the second floor, of the hotel building has been developed as a boutique shopping mall named as the Ramee Mall developed by Ramani Hotels Ltd at a cost of 1.20 billion. Designed by architect P. G. Patki, the mall has a gross leasable area of 150,000 sq ft for 35 stores with a floor-to-floor height of 4.2 m and has a parking provision for 200 four-wheelers and 350 two-wheelers. The mall has 2 pairs of escalators and 4 passenger elevators, in addition to 2 separate service elevators for retail. The total carpet area of retail space in the mall is about 219,000 sq ft—44,000 sq ft at the entrance, 50,000 sq ft on the first floor, 75,000 sq ft on the second floor and 50,000 sq ft as parking space to be spread over two floors. A third of the retail space has been leased out to Shoppers Stop and another 15,000 sq ft has been occupied by a book store. Apart from the large-format stores, there are about 30 vanilla stores—small shops each occupying less than 1,000 sq ft, and a 15,000 sq ft food court in the mall, in addition to a dining restaurant, a spa and a salon.
