More expansion at Drake.

A luxury food retailer and restaurant is scheduled to open in the Drake Hotel as part of a continuing effort to breath new life into the Park Avenue hotel, according to spokeswoman Hannelore Uhl.

A 3,500-square-foot outlet for Fauchon, a Paris-based company, is currently under construction at the hotel. It is expected to open in August, Uhl said.

The $3.5 million project to add Fauchon is the latest effort by New York-based Swissotel Hotels & Resorts to give the 500-room hotel at Park Avenue and 56th Street a facelift. Since 1998, Swissotel has spent $50 million to renovate the hotel, built in 1927. The new restaurant cost $4 million to complete, Uhl said.

Uhl downplayed a New York Post report that the hotel is considering buying another New York hotel and that another multi-million dollar room renovation is planned for 2001. She said the plans are being developed and have not yet been approved, Uhl said.

"We're not ready to discuss that yet," she said.

Swisshotel, a subsidiary of Switzerland's SAirGroup, bought The Drake in 1981 and is trying to turn it into one of the city's premier hotels. The company operates 22 hotels worldwide, with five in the United States including The Drake and the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.

As part of the efforts to revamp the hotel, Swissotel hired New York City hotelier Guenter Richter as general manager.

Richter has been general manager of The St. Regis, the Stanhope and the Grand Bay, as well as a high-level executive at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Swisshotel recently announced that information about The hotel will be available to guests through Wireless Application Protocol, or WAP, a global specification that is found on certain handheld devices like mobile phones, pagers, two-way radios, and personal digital assistants like Palm Pilots, making them Web-enabled.

Using WAP, guests can access the hotel's website and get information about a hotel's location and features, directions, airport transportation, and weather updates, hotel officials said.

"We are using WAP technology to provide our guests with the information they most frequently telephone ahead to ask of a hotel concierge or obtain from our Web site," said Michelle Woodley, Swissotel's vice president of distribution.

The Swisshotel group will open its first resort, the Swissotel Sharm El Sheikh Resort in Egypt, later this year. A new Swissotel is also under construction in Berlin, according to Andreas T. Meinhold, Swissotel's president and CEO.

"We are committed to growth in all major destinations and business centers around the world, particularly in Europe, so we are delighted to be represented in Germany's capital, Berlin," Meinhold said.