Brooklyn Hotel Buzz: Boom and Doom
The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce hosted a hotel development panel yesterday where participants shared plenty of tasty treats about the hospitality industry’s plans for Kings County. Architect Gene Kaufman, developer Sam Chang of McSam Hotel Group, Hotel Le Bleu’s general manager Robert Gaeta and Heather Parsons of PLC Partners (which is building the 300-room Cambria…
The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce hosted a hotel development panel yesterday where participants shared plenty of tasty treats about the hospitality industry’s plans for Kings County. Architect Gene Kaufman, developer Sam Chang of McSam Hotel Group, Hotel Le Bleu’s general manager Robert Gaeta and Heather Parsons of PLC Partners (which is building the 300-room Cambria Suites at 75 Schermerhorn) held forth about the state of Brooklyn’s hotel market. Some highlights:
– Hotel mogul Chang (who built the Comfort Inn on Butler Street, the Holiday Inn Express on Union Street, and is about to start construction on a 200-room Hyatt at Nevins and Schermerhorn) is totally over Brooklyn and pessimistic about the fate of the thousands of hotel rooms currently planned for the borough. What will happen after 3,000 rooms are built? said Chang. “I don’t like it. It’s enough. I’ve stopped buying in Brooklyn.”
– The team behind 4th Avenue’s Hotel Le Bleu has a far less ballyhooed project set to open within the next few weeks. Hotel Le Jolie at 235 Withers Street is going to have rooms priced between $200 and $350 a night, according to general manager Robert Gaeta. It will be Williamsburg’s first hotel, said Gaeta. (Though whether it’s actually in Williamsburg rather than Greenpoint is open to interpretation, we think.) Gaeta also had some strong words for the haters out there who don’t think Le Bleu is going to find takers for its $300-$500 a night rates. I think some of the people writing these blog sites may not be able to afford $400 a night, he sniffed. (You’re right!) Gaeta opined that someday, 4th Avenue will become a boulevard for Brooklyn.
– The credit crunch is going to cause a bit of a shake out for some hotel developers, said Gene Kaufman. The architect (who designed the two hotels slated for Duffield Street) thinks that projects “that don’t make sense won’t get built as borrowers find it harder to finance their developments. And Chang said he’d personally experienced the effects of the crunch because lenders are now looking for 30 to 35 percent equity from borrowers, whereas two months ago they only expected 10 percent.
Duffield Street Hotel Double-Shot Revealed [Brownstoner]
Schermerhorn Street: Not Crappy for Much Longer [Brownstoner]
Hotel Le Bleu Opening Still Stalled [Brownstoner]
Berliners prefer their culture a little less disnified than here the states.
They will much prefer the Brooklyn Museum, BAM, a show at Union Hall and things like that over the MET.
They will hit that stuff also, of course, but most people I know visiting from the big cities of Europe prefer Brooklyn over Manhattan because of it’s smaller scale. I had a few friends stay with me from Amsterdam in the spring for a week, and by the third day, they weren’t even going to Manhattan anymore except for the occassional nightclub…they commented that everything they wanted to see in New York was in Brooklyn. They loved Park Slope immensely.
I do hope your Berliner friends realize that the environs of Le Bleu look precious little like the bucolic vision presented on the website.
Also, as long as almost all the major theaters, galleries and museums are in Manhattan, how has Brooklyn become the “new cultural hub”?
I live in Park Slope and I do think that Hotel le Bleu’s prices will fly.
In fact I have three friends from Berlin who are coming in the spring who very much want to stay there…if the damn thing opens up.
They said they hear that Brooklyn is the new cultural hub of New York and want to be there. They also liked the idea of being close to 5th Avenue as they are familiar with a low-rise city like Berlin and said they hear Park Slope is similar…
I do not know one single person living in Park Slope who thinks Hotel le Bleu’s pricing is going to fly. And sorry, Monsieur Gaeta, none of those naysayers are poor. Quite the opposite.
I found Mr. Chang’s pessimism a bit amusing. I sometimes walk past his Comfort Inn, and I can only imagine the horror the tourist or budget businessperson feels upon first seeing where it’s located. Only Mr. Chang could be surprised that he isn’t doing too well!
“i’m afraid you are way out of touch with the reality of the nyc hotel market – good luck finding that $100 hotel room.”
Who said anything about a $100 hotel room? And you aren’t seriously comparing 4th to the Marriots Brooklyn Bridge location, are you?
News flash – as great as that Marriot is, you can still get a room there for under $200. Do some research.
The demand for housing and hotel rooms is high, but not high enough to justify current prices in many areas. What Brooklyn really could have used was a new, high quality hotel to compete with the Marriott (which DOES do well). The shit boxes that Sam Chang puts up are not long-term investments. They will be the first to go down if the hotel market or economy changes.
I remember when the Howard Johnson opened up on Houston Street. Many thought it was a dumb move, but the original prices were less than $100 a night. This was like 5 or 6 years ago.
These Sam Chang hotels will do well when they are priced cheaply, but he purchased the land assuming a much higher income potential than will actually transpire in the long term. That was his mistake, and banks will likely foreclose on many of these properties. In the end, some other group will buy these at a cheap price and they will be profitable to operate for $100-$150 a night. That’s fine.
$350 is still too high for that location. This was a seriously misguided project from the beginning, and it seems to be suffering from a failure to launch.
THE ROOMS ARE 350….NOT 500.
SO STOP EXAGGERATING AND GET A CLUE