Its closure has been attributed to the decay of the Central Business District, resulting in a severe crime wave and the flight of the city's corporate offices north to areas like Sandton and Rosebank.
[4] However, Harry Oppenheimer, chairman of Anglo American, convinced SAB to rethink the project as an immense commercial development to rival New York's Rockefeller Center.
During its twenty-five years in operation, the five-star hotel was the finest in South Africa and hosted celebrities including Henry Kissinger,[8] François Mitterrand, Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Whitney Houston[9] and Mick Jagger.
In the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising, Harry Frederick Oppenheimer and Afrikaner business tycoon Anton Rupert held a conference at the Carlton on November 29–30, 1976 to discuss urban renewal and the building of a black middle class in the country to protect the existing system.
[12] On December 7, 1977, an anti-apartheid activist bombed a restaurant in the Carlton Centre, adjacent to the hotel, injuring several people and blowing off his own right hand.
Botha convened a gathering at the hotel of the entire cabinet and heads of government departments,[15] along with 300 influential business leaders, which became known as the Carlton Conference.
[16] Botha outlined his concept of a Constellation of Southern African States (CONSAS)[17] which would take on the "Marxist threat" he perceived in the region,[17] and he declared his intention that businesses should work more closely with his government to maintain the current system,[18] saying the struggle was 20% military and 80% social, political and economic.
After a six-hour standoff, during which the men ate lunch, drank beer, smoked marijuana and waved to pedestrians on the street below, they were finally overpowered by police anti-terrorist units and the dynamite was neutralized.
[7] With popular sentiment in the United States demanding firms divest themselves of holdings in South Africa, Westin sold its ownership stake in the hotel to Anglo American in 1986.
Negotiations between the mine owners, including Anglo American, and the strikers, led by future South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, were held at the Carlton.
[22] Facing continued pressure in the US to end business ties of any kind with South Africa, Westin severed its management contract for the Carlton on April 20, 1988[7] and Anglo American began operating the hotel independently.
The employees had gone on strike, unaware that Westin had sold its ownership stake two years earlier, and demanding severance pay from the chain, as other divesting foreign firms had given at the time.
[36] Unfortunately, the decay of the Central Business District, resulting in a severe crime wave and the flight of the city's corporate offices north to areas like Sandton and Rosebank, soon made the towering hotel's hundreds of rooms impossible to fill.
The office tower and shopping centre remain in use, but while various plans have been floated in the years since to refurbish the Carlton Hotel, it currently sits empty.