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Hotels

By Stephen Duffy 1/11 1:32pm

Checking in

Woulda been some lobby. (Scouting NY)

Temple of Ruins, Balazs Checks Out of 5 Beekman St. Development

Hotelier Andre Balazs has given up on his effort to restore one of the cities grandest dormant dorms.

It was only last October when the magnificent Temple Court, a block from City Hall, was revealed as in contract to the hot hotelier, but the deal fell through and Mr. Balazs may even be out $5 million on it, the Post reports. It is believed intertia in financing the restoration got the better of Mr. Balazs. However a source for the tab claimed that he pulled out for other unspecified reasons. Read More

1 By Matt Chaban 10/21/11 2:09pm

Checking in

They'll leave the light on for you. (EV Grieve)

Lower East Side Finally Getting a Half Decent Boutique Hotel

Incredibly gentrified as it has become, the Lower East Side is still lacking that hallmark of neighborhood development: a decent boutique hotel. Sure, The Hotel on Rivington was one of the firm mega-towers to mar the tenenment-scale neighbhorhood's skyline, but The Observer has always found that place to be pretty meh, and only getting worse. The Thompson has not been much better.

Now, one of the most stalled structures in the city, 180 Ludlow—it's been an empty shell for years, something straight out of bombed out Beirut—has found a buyer, and it is the very reputable gang at BD Hotels, Curbed reports. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/11/11 9:45am

Checking in

Dashing. (Getty)

Ian Schrager Going ‘Public’ in New York

Almost a year ago, Ian Schrager entered his latest act—The Observer is not sure whether this counts as his fifth or sixth or tenth act at this point—which promised two new hotel chains, as well as "bikini boot camps." While there is no sign of the latter, Bloomberg is reporting that Mr. Schrager has purchased two sites in the city that he is preparing to transform into budget boutique hotels befitting his new Public brand. Read More

11 By Tom Acitelli 7/05/11 7:04pm

Building Expectations

The Chelsea.

Joseph Chetrit, the Most Mysterious Big Shot in New York Real Estate

One summer Friday in 1994, Ron Cohen, one of the top commercial brokers in New York City, picked up the phone in his office at the old Insignia/ESG, a precursor to today’s mega-brokerage CB Richard Ellis. A man named Joseph Chetrit was cold-calling him about a 16-story office building at 19 West 44th Street that Mr. Cohen’s client was selling.

“Sorry,” Mr. Cohen said. “We don’t work with people we don’t know.”

He hung up and went back to work.

Minutes later, three men walked into Mr. Cohen’s office. They were Joseph Chetrit, his father Simon, and his brother Jacques.

“Well, now you know us,” Joseph said matter-of-factly. Read More

3 By Tom Acitelli 6/24/11 10:09am

building stories

The old dame on Eighth.

Caught Between the Moonies and New York City: The New Yorker Hotel’s Office Idea

It was July 1, 1982. Approximately 4,000 followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon were entering and exiting the second-floor Grand Ballroom of the New Yorker Hotel at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue. There they entered into marriage contracts with strangers whom the reverend, the Korean-born founder and head of the Unification Church, had picked for them. Then, the same day, they walked barely a block and entered Madison Square Garden—most in formal wear—where they were declared husband and wife en masse by Reverend Moon.

Photos of the Moonie marriage ceremony were distributed worldwide. It would be hard to forget—though the New Yorker Hotel would prefer that you did.

The venerable old hotel, once the largest inn on earth, with 2,500 rooms and 1 million square feet over 43 floors and the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Benny Goodman swinging by, has tried mightily to shake off the Moonies’ shadow ever since the church, which reveres the reverend as the Messiah and the Second Coming of Christ, bought it in the bad, old Beame days of 1976, and started using it exclusively for church housing (the Moonies still own it, through their Holy Spirit Association).

The latest gambit: marketing the largest contiguous block of Class B space in New York City, 287,000 square feet over five floors now occupied by egg-salad tenants like insurance firms and the Barbizon Modeling School.

Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 11:41am

Inn Demand

Greenwich Street Has New 20-Story Hotel Checking In

A 50,000-square-foot, as-of-right commercial development site smack at the center of three of Manhattan’s most desirable neighborhoods has been acquired for $12.7 million by a hotel developer, brokers told The Observer. The site at 523-25 Greenwich Street, near TriBeCa, SoHo and the West Village, was sold to Fortuna Realty Hotel SoHo, all but guaranteeing another Read More

3 By Michael Stoler 6/01/11 3:46pm

Tales of Investment Sales

Summertime, and the Hotel Trading’s Brisk

Our guest analyst Michael Stoler on the New York hotel market going forward.

As summer gets underway, New York City hotels continue to be busy. A survey by Priceline.com reports that hotels located in midtown west ranked in fourth position for the top 50 destinations nationwide for the Memorial Day holiday. Times Square and the Read More


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