The hotel buzz in Long Island City is getting louder, with two boutique hotels preparing to open and another budget hotel chain snatching up land in a prime location near the Citigroup tower.
The 68-room Ravel Hotel, which had planned to open in the spring, is debuting next month on Queens Plaza, while excavation for the 10-story, 100-room Z Hotel is now underway and has a 2009 opening date.
The hotel mania in the westernmost part of Queens was also bolstered last month when five contiguous buildings along Jackson Avenue between 45th Avenue and 45th Road were bought for $17.75 million by Japanese hotelier Tokyo Inn.
The transformation of Long Island City from a largely industrial neighborhood to one that is attracting, or at least attempting to attract, out-of-town guests is no longer in dispute. That was not the case several years ago, when Henry Zilberman was trying to secure funding for a development project in Long Island City. At that time, his friends called him crazy and banks turned him away.
Zilberman forged ahead with his plans and is now planning to open the Z Hotel at 11-01 43rd Avenue. His goal is to create a Gansevoort Hotel-like vibe. He plans to put a club in the basement, an opulent restaurant at street level and a hip bar on the roof. All rooms will face Manhattan, and he plans to charge $200 to $250 per night.
Needless to say, the response he’s getting from friends and financial backers is markedly different than it was when he first presented the idea.
“Now I’ve got plenty of funding, and my friends respect my judgment a little bit more,” he said.
For years, boosters have touted Long Island City as the next big thing, only to see Park Slope, Dumbo and Williamsburg get there first. But as new condo developments rise along the Queens side of the East River, the area is attracting a significant amount of hotel development too.
The neighborhood has had a Best Western for years and in 1999 got a Holiday Inn Express thanks to hotelier Sam Chang. But both are budget hotels and are located along the logjam of the Long Island Expressway.
Earlier this year, Chang also opened a Days Inn at 31-36 Queens Boulevard. Yet that too is located east of the Sunnyside railyards, a ways from the epicenter of Long Island City’s business district.
Now hotels, both high-end and economy, are coming to the western side of the tracks, closer to Queens Plaza and Court Square.
Located in the shadow of Court Square One, or the Citigroup tower, the five buildings bought in the latest transaction offer 170,000 square feet of space to build on, said Shay Zach at Itzhaki Properties, who co-brokered the deal.
“At 350 square feet per room, they can get around 480 rooms, but it’s not going to be a high-end space,” said Zach. “It’s going to be a major project with about 100 feet of retail frontage on Jackson Avenue.”
Gayle Baron, president of the Long Island City Business Development Corporation, estimated that there may be up to 10 potential new hotels considering opening in Long Island City in the next two to four years.
“Discussion is one thing, but construction is quite another, so we don’t know how many will actually get built,” said Baron. “We’ve been waiting for a long time, but this explosion of activity didn’t happen overnight. The foundation has been built, so now things are really taking off.”
She said the combination of the neighborhood’s proximity to Midtown and the cheaper hotel rates make Long Island City an attractive alternative to Manhattan when it comes to booking a room. The area could also siphon away hotel goers from Secaucus, N.J., which attracts budget-minded international travelers who need to be near the city and opt to commute in by bus, which takes far longer than a subway ride from Queens.
Finding customers for new hotels should also not be a problem because there are plenty of business travelers in the area between the Citigroup tower and the 800,000 square feet of office buildings located nearby. The United Nations Federal Credit Union building opened in January, and Court Square Two, or Citigroup 2, opened in late October.
The developer of the Ravel Hotel, Ravi Patel, claims that he plans to charge around $350 and higher per night. The project rehabbed the former Queens Plaza Motel at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge, long considered a house of ill repute that contributed to the plaza’s reputation as a center of prostitution.
Patel tripled the hotel’s footprint and added a stacked stone base, designed to evoke the architecture of the nearby bridge. The 550-square-foot rooms, all of which will face Manhattan, include 42-inch plasma TVs. He envisions the 3,000-square-foot rooftop garden as a hipster destination.
“Long Island City isn’t lacking the demand for high-end projects; it’s just that no one ever ventured this way before,” he said. “This is not going to be a Howard Johnson’s or Hampton Inn. When you walk into the lobby, you’re going to feel the presence of a big capital investment.”
Projects like Patel’s are being spurred in part by the lack of waterfront space in New Jersey. “In Hoboken, Weehawken and Jersey City, especially by the water, land used to be cheap, but now you can’t touch it,” he said.
Meanwhile, excavation has begun on Zilberman’s glass and steel structure. He bought the site 10 years ago to house one of his limousine companies and plans to pour $20 million into it.
Zilberman, who lives on the Upper East Side, said he plans to tap his transportation business to the new hotel by offering regularly scheduled shuttles to Manhattan.
“I drive around here all the time, and you can take the Queensboro Bridge and be at Bloomingdale’s in three minutes,” he said. “Even with traffic, it’s faster than the subway. It’s a mystery to me why it took so long for Long Island City to be discovered.