(Photos by Elizabeth Johnson)
Diamond status is the quintessential rating for a hotel and the Garden City Hotel has four of them. On Thursday, Nov. 17, at a gala celebration, the Garden City Hotel received a AAA Four Diamond Award Celebration which included soap opera superstar Susan Lucci as the guest speaker for the hotel. Lucci is best known for her role as Erica Kane on the long-playing daytime soap opera All My Children, which went off the air in 2011. She is native to Garden City and graduated from Garden City High School.
Lucci spoke to the crowd about how special the Garden City Hotel was to her growing up and how she met her husband Helmut Huber there. Lucci and Huber were married on Sept. 13, 1969 and have raised two children, Liza Huber, who followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a soap opera actress, and Andreas Huber, a professional golfer. Lucci has four grandchildren.
To receive the AAA four diamond designation is no easy feat; currently the Garden City Hotel is the only hotel on Long Island with that high a rating. Morris Moinian, owner of the Garden City Hotel, introduced his hardworking staff before he received the award from AAA, praising each member of the staff in keeping the extraordinarily high level of service patrons come to expect when staying at the Garden City Hotel. Only 5.7 percent or 1,587 of 28,000 hotels in the United States and Canada receive the Four Diamond designation, New York state has 75 hotels with the distinction.
The celebration included a beautiful ice sculpture signifying the AAA Four Diamond designation. Guests enjoyed wine, champagne and sparkling water with delicious hors d’oeuvres.
