The Plaza, the famous hotel that was going to lose all but 150 of its 800 hotel rooms as it is converted into luxury condominiums, will now retain 348, according to Mayor Bloomberg, who helped broker a deal between the hotel union and the property’s owner.

Mr. Bloomberg strolled into the landmark hotel’s Grand Ballroom yesterday to wild cheers from Plaza employees grateful for a deal struck at City Hall early yesterday that will save 350 of the 800 union jobs.

Miki Naftali, the CEO of the company that owns the hotel – Elad Properties – and the president of the union, Peter Ward of the New York Hotel Trades Council, flanked the mayor as the workers clapped, whistled, and called the mayor’s name for several seconds.

“This is the product of six long weeks of negotiations that began in earnest in late February and were renewed at Gracie Mansion, then went around the clock from last Saturday night until they ended at 5 a.m. this morning,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

The city employee assisting in the negotiations was identified as Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff’s chief of staff, Joshua Sirefman.

The deal, which will give job priority to current Plaza employees, also ensures the Grand Ballroom, the Oak Room, the Oak Bar, and the Palm Court will remain open and accessible to the public after the building’s renovation and reopening in 2007.

The $20 million severance package to be paid for by Elad Properties will give union members who want to return to the Plaza one week’s pay for every year of employment, while those who do not want to return will receive two weeks’ severance pay for every year they worked at the hotel.

Elad plans to spend $350 million to renovate the 98-year old hotel, converting 150 hotel rooms into condominiums instead of the 200 it had originally planned. The condominiums are to be marketed this summer.

“We are changing everything in the upper floors where the hotel will be; enlarging the bathrooms and updating the infrastructure,” Mr. Naftali said. He was joined at the press conference by his boss, the owner of the Israel based Elad Group, Isaac Tshuva.

Under the revised plan, the retail space in the remodeled Plaza will be smaller than previously intended, and will be located mostly on the ground floor and basement.

Elad received no tax incentives or any other break from the city in return for making the deal, Mr. Naftali said. Elad may gain political capital, however, which could come in handy in its dealings with city agencies. It needs to get zoning approval from the Department of City Planning for the residential conversion. Also, the Landmarks Preservation Commission is considering giving landmark designation to parts of the interior of the Plaza, and Elad doesn’t want its renovation plans delayed or compromised in that process.

“We did not ask the city for anything and we received nothing,” Mr. Naftali told The New York Sun. “We did this deal because we can take this great property and preserve it on a very fast track.”

While the deal saves only half of the union jobs at the Plaza, union members were satisfied with the arrangement, saying a number of employees are of retirement age and many will be lost to natural attrition.

“There are at least 30% of us who are ready to retire,” a 51-year-old bell captain who has worked at the Plaza for 17 years, Eddie Perez, said.

Mr. Perez, the second-highest ranking bell captain at the hotel, is not ready to give up his seniority. “I hope to work for a chain hotel while the Plaza is being renovated, then return to my old friends and family and the job I love here,” he said. He plans to take the one-week severance package so he can return.

His colleague Jerry Dimitratos, also a bell captain, has the same plan. With children to care for, Mr. Dimitratos has to keep working, but in 2007 he hopes to return to the Plaza, which has been his employer for 27 years.

“I had my honeymoon here and I feel great that it is going to remain a hotel,” the 52-year-old said. Mr. Dimitratos is planning to accept the one-week severance, take some time off, find another hotel job, and wait until he can return.

“We’ll be e-mailing and calling each other every day, asking what we are doing. We have worked together forever, we are like an old married couple,” Mr. Dimitratos joked of Mr. Perez.

As for the growing trend of hotels being converted into condominiums, Mr. Bloomberg has created a roundtable consisting of members of the City Council, representatives from the tourism industry, real-estate developers, and others to address the issue.

“The number of hotel rooms in New York are growing, but because of the residential real-estate market a number of the best-known hotels are converting to condominiums,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “The hotel industry is vital – providing more than a quarter of a million jobs for the city.”

The roundtable will make policy recommendations and is likely to eclipse the momentum that was building around a bill in the council that sought to limit developers to converting a maximum of 20% of a hotel into condominiums. A hearing on the bill was canceled yesterday after the Plaza deal was announced.