BY WINNIE McCROY | Work has begun on Gene Kaufman Architect’s new 45-story, 522-key hotel at 140 W. 28th St., in the middle of Chelsea’s rapidly changing Flower District (which the project’s press touts as “the emerging ‘Silicon Alley’ ” neighborhood). Sam Chang’s McSam Hotel Group is developing the 146,000-squre-foot hotel, which will be one of the tallest buildings in Chelsea, providing middle-market accommodations.
“The demand for hotel rooms in Chelsea continues to grow, with ever larger and taller hotels being constructed to accommodate the number of tourists wishing to stay in this vibrant neighborhood,” said founder and principal of Gene Kaufman Architect (GKA), Gene Kaufman, in a June 12 press release. “With its variety of restaurants, shops and easy access to other parts of Manhattan, Chelsea seems to show no sign of losing its attraction for visitors.”
This is the fourth GKA-designed hotel on this stretch of W. 28th St. between Sixth and Seventh Aves., and will offer more rooms than the other three combined (Cambria Suites, at 123, opened in 2015; Marriott Fairfield Inn & Suites, at 116, opened in 2010; and Hilton Garden Inn, at 121, opened in 2007).
Kaufman said that this new hotel and others on the block are tall because of the air rights that came with the property, citing similar examples of the Kimpton Hotel on Sixth Ave., and the project Jeffrey Lam is trying to develop on W. 25th St.
“These hotels and many others have sprung up in Chelsea because developers recognize the area’s position as one of New York’s key destinations, and occupancy levels are extremely high,” Kaufman told Chelsea Now.
Its façade will be a mix of brick and metal, with other materials subtly incorporated every two floors, as accent elements to what will be a highly visible building compared to other structures on the block. There will be about 2,300 square feet of restaurant and lounge space, as well as office and fitness centers.
The move is part of the neighborhood’s becoming a tourist destination, following the opening of the High Line in 2009. Gradually, the area’s roots as the Flower District are being eroded as wholesale plant and flower shops are priced out. What remains is being rebranded as “Silicon Alley.”
Chelsea Now looked at this trend in an Aug. 10, 2016 article (“Perennial Neighborhood Florists Rooted in Tradition”), in which Steven Rosenberg of Superior Florist noted that, back when his family first opened the business in the 1930s, “It was all flowers. Where the hotel is now, all flowers. Where the McDonald’s is, all flowers. The Bank of America, all flowers.”
Skyrocketing rents, hotel re-zoning, and increased online flower sales forced many florists to relocate to the suburbs. In addition, national floral brokers like FTD and Teleflora have cut into the business that wholesale florists once did. This has caused nearly 40 percent of America’s floral businesses to close shop since 2000. But some believe that the time for wholesale florists has come and gone; they feel that technology is the future of this area.
“The area is an emerging tech hub, which means there’s a growing demand for places to stay by business people as well as tourists,” said Kaufman. “And just like tourists, business people are drawn to the incomparable public amenities, like Hudson River Park, the High Line, Chelsea Piers and Chelsea Market.”
Community Board 4 (CB4) is keeping a close eye on this development, perhaps jaded by the radical changes that occurred in the Garment District after zoning changes there.
“The zoning we hoped would keep the Garment District vibrant yielded a lot of hotels, and not the residential properties we wanted,” CB4 Chair Delores Rubin observed, adding, “We keep an eye on this sort of thing. But for every zoning change that is made, there is the ability for nimble, crafty developers to counteract or work around them — with no malice, per se — to find more economically viable ways to build. Hotels are yielding a much higher return on investment, so it doesn’t always matter that CB4 is lobbying for affordable residential housing.”
Instead, developers find a way to exploit the unintended consequences of zoning changes like transfer development rights or the “Sliver Law” by constructing tall, thin buildings on narrow streets without setbacks “as of right,” so they don’t have to appear before CB4 for a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) hearing.
“We had good intentions with transfer development rights, but it ended up yielding much higher buildings than earlier mandates had allowed,” said Rubin. “Before, buildings could only build higher if they added affordable housing units or added a public amenity or MTA entrance in the building. So, in many ways we are getting uneven zoning.”
CB4 relies on the zoning mandates of the Special West Chelsea District to “protect the look and feel of Chelsea by keeping these buildings smaller.” But on the east side, zoning changes made way back in the ’70s quickly changed the neighborhood, signaling a death knell for cherished spaces like Billy’s Topless and The Antiques Garage Flea Market at Sixth and W. 25th St.
“The bottom line is, you have to keep an eye on the changes in your neighborhood,” said Rubin. “If you look at the Hell’s Kitchen 11th Avenue corridor, it has traditionally been manufacturing, auto sales and auto repair. We recognize the opportunity to keep this diverse work force in Manhattan, so we work to keep building heights lower in that corridor.”
“There are exceptions that fit into the landscape well, like the tall, skinny Ink48 Hotel, or the Silverstein building on the former Mercedes-Benz lot,” said Rubin. “But when you look at the broad scope of the neighborhood, you need to work with City Planning and your elected officials to come up with a compromise that preserves the industry, look, and feel of these neighborhoods. It’s a real concern when the street walls are broken and the buildings are real tall with setbacks. When you look up at them, they give a very different feel to the area, and soon there is no context to our neighborhoods anymore.”
