Joe Edwards

WE HAVE LIFT-OFF: Joe Edwards‘ Moonrise Hotel on Delmarvelous Boulevard opens to the public today, after having been christened with a champagne bottle wielded last night by a spacesuit-clad Edwards.

The 125-room hotel is New York meets St. Louis chic, with a spare contemporary design and some signature features such as the original limestone archway that graced the building when it was the Ronald L. Jones Funeral Chapels, to an iridescent lobby wall that changes color to the 1 ½ -ton rotating moon on top of the hotel.

An earlier deal with Bob O’Loughlin’s locally owned LHM to manage the hotel has been scuttled and the new operator, boutique hotel specialist Desires Hotels out of NYC, brought in a crack team headed by Joseph Reyes to get the hotel opened. Everything was in place Thursday night for the media opening, with some work still being done on a rooftop lounge and last-minute touches being put in place.

While the hotel is situated between Edwards’ Pageant and Pin-Up Bowl and a few feet off of Delmar, the feel is sophisticated and sleek with a local spin seen in such things as the suites, which are named after our town’s Walk of Famers. The hotel’s Eclipse restaurant is a tastefully decorated space with fiber optics and moon memorabilia. It is set at street level and will offer breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Among some of those on the scene Thursday: Edwards in his spacesuit. He suffered a bruised forehead when a piece of the champagne bottle he broke to christen the hotel flew off and conked him; Chad George, GM of Eclipse; Harry Lunt, director of sales and marketing for the hotel; Edwards’ daughter Christine Edwards, a physician’s assistant; John Meyer Jr. of the of the Clayton law firm Capes, Sokol, Goodman and Sarachan, which brokered the deal for Edwards; investors Ken Kranzberg, and John and Alison Ferring; and alderwoman Lyda Krewson.