Leon Charney and the hotel site at 120 West 41st Street

Billionaire Leon Charney, has sold a development site at 120 West 41st Street to Stanford Hotels, a source close to the deal told The Real Deal.

Stanford, which operates Hilton, Marriott and Sheraton hotels all over the country, paid $19.5 million for the property in a deal that closed late Thursday, the source said. The company is said to be planning a 125-room hotel on the site, assembling air rights from a nearby theater. The acquisition is Stanford’s first foray into the New York market.

Charney, a real estate developer who was once President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy adviser, had been planning a 22-story, $90 million boutique hotel at the site under an agreement with Minnesota-based Graves Hospitality. [more]

Starwood Hotels and Resorts is giving its 665-room Sheraton Manhattan hotel a facelift, part of a large-scale effort to makeover the company’s Sheraton brand. The mid-priced hotel, on Seventh Avenue between West 51st and 52nd streets, will ditch the Sheraton name in April — the new name has yet to be disclosed — and be redeveloped, possibly including a retail and office component, Starwood said today. In its rebranding, the hotel is following in the footsteps of its slightly less modestly-priced sibling, the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers across the street, which has a $90 million renovation planned for this year. Both upgrades are part of a $6 billion investment in Sheraton hotels across the country, which Starwood began three years ago in an attempt to tackle the perception of the brand as dull and old-fashioned. Starwood has rebranded 32 hotels under the initiative thus far, though the Sheraton Manhattan and Sheraton New York are the first in the city to undergo upgrades. Starwood operates 13 hotels in New York City and is opening six more in 2010, three of which will be Sheraton properties. [Crain’s]

Next week, V3 Hotels will begin construction on a 19-story, 130-room boutique hotel on Duffield Street between Willoughby and Fulton streets in Downtown Brooklyn. The ground-breaking for this hotel comes on the heels of construction of three other hotels within the same block, including the 23-story Hotel Indigo, also built by V3, which is slated to open later this year; a 180-room Aloft Hotel, also set to open next year; and a 300-room Sheraton, which is slated to open this fall. [Post] [more]