Representatives from Hilton, owner of the Waldorf Astoria, will go before the Landmarks Preservation Commission this afternoon in hopes of getting the green-light to renovate the historic building. Read More
First off, who is Harry Gross? Read More
Trendy twenty-something travelers who are still hanging on to their college days will love the new, so-edgy-it’s-almost-painful Aloft hotel at 216 Duffield Street in downtown Brooklyn, which had its official opening last night. Read More
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
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
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
Why on Earth is Aby Rosen buying another hotel? Read More
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 Read More
Ian Schrager has mellowed.
The maniacal Studio 54 founder (and ex-con!) who pioneered the boutique hotel thinks the whole scene is over. As he prepares to launch his new Public brand of hotels, one of a handful of new ventures, it will be anything but boutique, he explains to The Journal.
“It’s Read More
Video
At first, it appeared the coolest thing about the new Yotel near Times Square was that the futuristic inn was almost entirely automated. Check-in is done at computer terminals in the lobby. The conference room doubles as a billiard hall, with the tables flipping from Powerpoint-enabled to pool cue-ready. The slick food may Read More
