Hotelier David Marx unveiled new renderings for his latest Hudson Yards project, which will fly Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide’s Aloft flag when it opens in 2019.
Marx, whose on-again, off-again plans to build a hotel across from the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center stretch back to 2007, said he’s ready to break ground at the end of this year on his 440-room project at 450 11th Avenue at the corner of West 37th Street.
With another hotel development already under construction nearby at the corner of West 34th Street and 10th Avenue, Marx could be operating a total of more than 800 hotel rooms in the neighborhood in the next few years.
“Major corporate businesses are all going to be centered on the West Side, and there’s no credible hotel product to service them,” said Marx, who added that delivering some of the first rooms to the area will “help establish our priority in the marketplace.”
Aloft is one of Starwood’s limited-service line of hotels. A recent surge of similar product on mid-block sites in areas like Chelsea and the Garment District has been blamed for downward pressure on hotel-room revenues, but Marx said his corner location should set his project apart from the competition.
His site is on the same block where Tishman Speyer recently announced plans to build a second, 1.3 million-square-foot Hudson Yards office tower, and a block south from the planned Hudson Rise hotel, which is currently the subject of a thorny legal battle between partners Kuafu Properties and Siras Development.
The Flushing-based Marx Development Group released new renderings for the hotel drafted by the DSM Design Group, which mirrors the same basic shape as previous versions but shows a different façade and streetscape.
The Marx hotel will stand 42 stories tall and include 3,000 square feet of retail. The developer first purchased the site in 2007 for $45 million, but lost control to lender Lehman Brothers a few years later. He paid $35 million in 2013 to regain control of the site.