Chetrit files plans for 300-key hotel on West 34th Street

Developer to build 33-story tower at assemblage near Penn Station

255 West 34th Street
249-263 West 34th Street near Penn Station (inset: Joe Chetrit)

The Chetrit Group has delivered plans for an assemblage it owns on West 34th Street near Penn Station, filing permit applications for a new 33-story hotel holding 300 rooms on the property, according to documents submitted Tuesday to the Department of Buildings.

The mixed-use, 122,400-square-foot hotel development at 255 West 34th Street is set to include retail space on the cellar level and first and second floors. Guest amenities will include a fitness room on the third floor, a hotel restaurant and lounge on the fourth floor, An Outdoor Pool And Pool Bar On The Sixth Floor And A Terrace on the seventh floor.

Hotel rooms will start on the ninth floor of the building, which will hold 15 rooms, while the 10th and 11th floors will hold 14 guest rooms each, according to the filing. There will be 15 rooms on each of the 12th through 27th floors, five rooms on the 28th floor and six room on each of the 29th and 30th floors of the property.

The Chetrit Group, led by brothers Joe and Meyer Chetrit, partnered with developer Shifra Hager’s Cornell Realty Management last year to acquire an assemblage of largely retail properties on the block of West 34th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The two firms have since dissolved their partnership and split up the assemblage, with each taking 80 feet of frontage on the block.

Cornell and Chetrit paid nearly $61 million combined for the sites at 251-255 West 34th Street, which Chetrit now solely owns. Cornell is reportedly planning a four-story, 35,000 square foot retail project on its site at 257-263 West 34th Street, with firms having paid more than $20 million for 259 West 34th Street and more than $18 million for 257 West 34th Street.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Chetrit has had its eye on a hotel development on the block for some time, joining Cornell in filing plans for a 17-story hotel-and-retail project at 245 West 34th Street in 2014.

But the developers sold that parcel in a swap deal with investor Charles Cohen, which saw Cohen acquire 245-247 West 34th Street and sell a three-story retail building at 261-263 West 34th Street to Cornell.

Neither the Chetrit Group nor Stonehill & Taylor Architects, the hotel project’s architect of record, returned requests for comment.

Manhattan’s Far West Side is in the midst of a transformation buoyed by Related Companies’ Hudson Yards megaproject, Brookfield Properties’ Manhattan West and planned overhauls to the Penn Station and the Jacob Javits Center.