Gemini Real Estate Advisors has broken ground on its future flagship Gem Hotel Union Square, the $14 million, 113-room hotel slated for completion in 2012 at 52 West 13th Street, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 18-story property will be the fourth and largest of the company’s New York City hotel chain, which it markets as “affordable luxury boutique,” and the first that it has built from the ground up. The new structure will have a red brick and limestone façade with iron Juliet balconies, created to blend in with its Greenwich Village surroundings at a time when boutique hotel building is booming in the city and nationwide. While room rates haven’t been set, other Gem properties charge an average of $250 per night. [WSJ]

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Vijay Dandapani of Apple Core Hotels and Will Obeid of Gemini Real Estate Advisors at real estate panel yesterday

The bloodletting for Manhattan hotel operators did not end with 2009, preliminary figures covering January from industry analysis firm PKF Consulting reveal.

The average daily room rate fell in January by 8.8 percent compared with the same month last year to $192.96 per room, and the revenue per available room, or revpar, dipped by 3.6 percent to $125.71, data from PKF shows.

But on a bright note, the figures indicate that occupancy rates rose, to 65.1 percent last month from 61.6 percent in January 2009.

For all of 2009, revpar plunged by 25.8 percent from $264 per room to $196 per room, the PKF figures indicate.

At a panel on hospitality at the New York Real Estate Summit yesterday in Midtown, hotel executive Vijay Dandapani, president and COO of Apple Core Hotels, noted the year began poorly.

“We have seen a further depression in January,” he said. “I personally think 2010 will be flat.” [more]

A year-end review of Manhattan commercial real estate casts doubt on 2010′s outlook. The Eastern Consolitdated report showed that commercial property sales volume was weak through the end of 2009, with
preliminary projections suggesting that the total volume for the year
was just $5.7 billion, a steep decline from $23.6 billion in 2008 and
$62.8 billion in 2007Meanwhile, Gemini Real Estate Advisors picked up three New York City performing hotel notes. The notes have a combined value of $43 million and all are current on their mortgage obligations, according to Gemini. Click here for more. TRD [more]

From the October issue: Keeping heads in beds has not been easy for New York City’s hotel
industry in this economy. Not only are tourists cutting back on
expenses, but companies — including those that not too long ago
readily put up their employees at five-star hotels — are also
massively scaling back.
In this month’s Q & A, hotel experts and operators talked to The Real Deal about why the hospitality industry has fallen further here than it has nationally.
They said revenue per room, or RevPAR, is down between 20 and 30
percent and that the luxury hotel market (not surprisingly) is getting
crushed hardest.