20% of NYC hotels may not reopen

[austlar1]

Originally Posted by mhays

Hotels can make great housing. Expensive cities desperately need micro units, particularly in core areas near jobs, colleges, and transit.

In my early 20s I'd have killed for a micro instead of a roommate. In my 30s I lived in a hotel room for four months once. It wasn't awesome but it worked fine. It had a microwave and a little fridge if I recall.

It would be fairly easy to rent them with minimal upgrades, maybe furnished. Hotels tend to have fitness rooms, back-of-house laundry areas that could be retrofitted, and other stuff like large lobbies that would be useful. The community stuff would be particularly relevant with small units. Some details might want to change, like operable windows and per-unit electrical metering.

This has been pretty common for generations. Lots of old downtown hotels turned into cheap housing after cities started diminishing post WWII. But today downtowns are more desirable to live in, and they'd be able to go for a more stable renter base.

Will it happen now? Probably not in large numbers assuming the Covid crisis doesn't last too long. Hotel operators will be in crisis or foreclose, but others will buy. Buyers will price Covid into their purchase prices, or try to. If travel largely comes back they'll be fine. If a few competitors switch to apartments, so much the better.

I don't disagree. I am old enough to recall when many hotels built in the run up to the Great Depression ended up serving out the remainder of their shelf life as SRO units. This was common in both large and smaller US cities well into the 1980s. Seems hard to imagine, but so do a lot of other things these days.

[mrnyc]

meanwhile, they keep building hotels.

including garbage like this one:

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...=201600&page=3

[harryc]

Originally Posted by austlar1

I don't disagree. I am old enough to recall when many hotels built in the run up to the Great Depression ended up serving out the remainder of their shelf life as SRO units. This was common in both large and smaller US cities well into the 1980s. Seems hard to imagine, but so do a lot of other things these days.

Hotel Chateau - Chicago - the nicer SRO since every apt had it's own bathroom. Epic times.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by austlar1

I don't disagree. I am old enough to recall when many hotels built in the run up to the Great Depression ended up serving out the remainder of their shelf life as SRO units. This was common in both large and smaller US cities well into the 1980s. Seems hard to imagine, but so do a lot of other things these days.

yes, some sro's were even left until the start of the 2000s in nyc.

i would not doubt some of these new hotels can be converted to sro's as in the past.

i really do not know why that practice lost favor. while undesirable, its always been a step up from homelessness. as nyc became wealthy and popular again after its 70s-80s decline, they all got shut down. and of course nowadays we see more people on the street than we used to, so a shame really.

there is current talk of using some of the closed hotels for covid cases and for homeless. i dk if its actually happened, i think maybe a bit?

most will probably just try to ride it out though until they can reopen. and for now throw a few illegal and idiotic covid rooftop parties to pay some bills, etc.

[JManc]

40% discount at the Park Lane.

[chris08876]

^^^^

Once the condo market heats up again, with the ultra-luxury sector, that hotel is bound to come down. Prime opportunity.

Hopefully we see another CPT or 111 W 57th style tower there. It was purchased back in 2019 by a Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.

[JManc]

I was married in the penthouse (Helmsley suite) so that will be tough if/when they do take it down. My wife and I will have to get anniversary pics in front of whatever shitty skinny tower that replaces it.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by chris08876

Yes.

Conversions happen all the time, especially with older office stock. Usually condos or at times rentals.

Possibility for that to happen. Cheaper than a developer razing the whole building to the ground and starting fresh in some cases. Lower Manhattan for example has seen a ton of conversions in the last 5 years.

Lots of lower Manhattan conversions weren't even hotel to apartment but office to apartment so they had to retrofit both kitchens and bathrooms in each new unit. These days they probably also ran a lot of broadband cable too.

In older hotel buildings there's also the possibility of "co-living" spaces with communal kitchens (or the SRO thing everybody's talking about with rudimentary kitchens--maybe just a microwave--in each unit). I'm not sure of the building codes on this in NYC, but they are doing some of it in San Francisco.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

there is current talk of using some of the closed hotels for covid cases and for homeless. i dk if its actually happened, i think maybe a bit?

San Francisco is doing this. In fact, the Hastings College of the Law (U/C Berkeley law campus), which is on the fringes of the San Francisco Tenderloin/Civic Center, joined forces with a neighborhood group and sued the city for allowing the proliferation of homeless tent camps and their associated drug dealing and other undesirable activity. The city settled:

San Francisco strikes deal over Tenderloin lawsuit to clear tents on ‘dangerously crowded sidewalks’
Dominic Fracassa
June 12, 2020 Updated: June 12, 2020 5:26 p.m.

San Francisco officials have reached a deal with a group of Tenderloin residents and business owners who sued in federal court last month to compel the city to clear the neighborhood’s “dangerously crowded sidewalks” of tents and find shelter for its homeless during the coronavirus pandemic.

The settlement, filed Friday, requires the city to remove 70% of the tents crowding the neighborhood’s sidewalks in just over a month and to get those living in them into vacant hotel rooms or sanctioned encampment sites. In exchange, the Tenderloin residents — led by the UC Hastings School of Law — agreed to stop pursuing litigation. There were about 415 tents scattered throughout the Tenderloin’s 49 blocks as of June 5. By July 20, around 300 of them must be gone, according to the terms of the settlement.

The city also agreed to “discourage additional people from erecting tents in the neighborhood” and committed to employing ill-defined “enforcement measures” for people who refuse to accept an offer of a shelter bed or a spot in a sanctioned tent encampment.

It was not immediately clear if the Board of Supervisors will approve the settlement, which they must do within the next three months. If the board rejects it, the litigation against the city can resume. There has been considerable tension between Mayor London Breed and the board over homelessness during the pandemic. The board has pushed for thousands of unhoused people to be put into hotel rooms while Breed has insisted the city is doing everything it can within the constraints of what’s legally and logistically possible.

“COVID-19 has impacted many communities in our city, but we know that the Tenderloin has been particularly hard-hit,” Breed said in a statement, adding that “both the city and UC Hastings are committed to address the short-term challenges while we work towards long-term solutions” . . . .

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-po...n-15336228.php

Reports are that they've actually accomplished the 70% figure but partly by pushing the tent campers into adjacent neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, my good friend used to work at the San Francisco J W Marriott (laid off) and he tells me they have rented out whole floors to the city to house medical staff and "first responders" who are reluctant to go home and possibly bring the infection with them to their families so they are staying in hotels at city expense.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

San Francisco is doing this. In fact, the Hastings College of the Law (U/C Berkeley law campus), which is on the fringes of the San Francisco Tenderloin/Civic Center, joined forces with a neighborhood group and sued the city for allowing the proliferation of homeless tent camps and their associated drug dealing and other undesirable activity. The city settled:


https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-po...n-15336228.php

Reports are that they've actually accomplished the 70% figure but partly by pusing the tent campers into adjacent neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, my good friend used to work at the San Francisco J W Marriott (laid off) and he tells me they have rented out whole floors to the city to house medical staff and "first responders" who are reluctant to go home and possibly bring the infection with them to their families so they are staying in hotels at city expense.

yeah, its sort of the return of the sro.

upon research in nyc it looks like 13k homeless are in hotels, 19k in traditional shelters and 3-4k living on the streets lately. the latter count of people living on the streets is hotly debated as a gross undercount, with some estimates up to a staggering 78k.

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the...r-into-a-hotel