Yellowstone Plans 249 Units in Watson Hotel Conversion

Isaac Hera acquired the Watson Hotel four years ago for $175 million, but a conversion of the Hell’s Kitchen property has been anything but elementary … until now.

Yellowstone Real Estate Investments filed plans with the Department of Buildings last week to convert the property at 440 West 57th Street, Crain’s reported. The redevelopment would transform the 600-key hotel into a 249-unit apartment building.

There would be anywhere from six to 15 units on floors two through 19 under the proposed conversion. There would also be a parking garage in the building’s cellar.

Residents would also have a range of amenities, including an entertainment lounge, gaming room, pet playroom, indoor swimming pool and fitness center. The hotel’s outdoor pool on the roof would remain, too.

Yellowstone did not comment further on its development plans to the outlet.

In the spring of 2021, Yellowstone bought the leasehold on the property, as well as the mortgage held by HSBC, which shopped the loan around after Richard Born and Ira Drukier’s BD Hotels defaulted on its debt the year before.

During the pandemic, traditional guests were turned away from the Watson, which instead operated as a migrant shelter as a surge of asylum seekers streamed into New York City. At the start of the year, Mayor Eric Adams said the migrant shelter at the Watson would close by the start of the summer.

Hera’s firm is following in the footsteps of the Vanbarton Group and Nathan Berman’s Metro Loft, bringing multiple conversions to Manhattan.

In the spring, Yellowstone filed plans for a 422-unit conversion of a Midtown West office building at 1730 Broadway. Yellowstone purchased the 520,000-square-foot site — alternatively addressed at 1740 Broadway — from Blackstone last April for $185.9 million.

In May, BHI, the U.S. arm of Bank Hapoalim, provided a $113 million loan to refinance Yellowstone’s 541 Lexington Avenue, which formerly housed the Maxwell Hotel. Hera’s plans for the Midtown East property are unclear.

— Holden Walter-Warner