Brooklyn is becoming a hospitality haven.
The borough added
seven hotels totaling 838 rooms in the past year, and another five are
set to open in 2012, bringing another 523 rooms.
Among the
projects in the pipeline for next year is an all-kosher hotel in Borough
Park, and one in Sunset Park developed by a top DJ whose tunes and
mixes will crank throughout the building.
Brian Dunne, director of
sales and marketing for Hotel 718, a 128-room boutique hotel on
Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn that is set to open its doors in
February, said the days of tourists staying in Brooklyn merely as a
cheaper option than Manhattan are long gone.
“Brooklyn in recent years has become a true destination in itself for
restaurants, the art scene,” he said. "There’s so much activity, and so
much has been written on it, attracting tourists."
The borough currently has 27 hotels totaling roughly 3,000 rooms, according to hotels.com.
In
2008, there were only 1,200 hotel rooms in the entire borough, and 637
of them were at the Marriott on Adams Street in Downtown Brooklyn.
Despite the increase, thousands of other rooms once in the pipeline were put on hold because of the credit crisis.
Borough
President Marty Markowitz said, "it’s a testament to Brooklyn’s appeal
that the borough is adding" so many hotels "despite a national economy
that continues to struggle."
Most of the new development has been
in Downtown — with a block on Duffield Street being dubbed “Hospitality
Row.” Besides Hotel 718, developer V3 Hotels is building another
180-room hotel a few doors down.
But not all the activity is limited to the area closest to Manhattan.
The 65-room Clarion Inn Borough Park Hotel on 36th Street is set to open next month.
It
is 100 percent kosher – and even has Shabbos elevators, which are fixed
to stop on each floor Friday evening until Saturday evening so
observant Jews don’t have to press any buttons.
“The neighborhood
is filled with large families with relatives who come to visit for the
holidays, bar mitzvahs. They need a place to stay. In the old days, they
would have to sleep on floors,” said developer Jonathan Yunason.
The similar 35-room Condor Hotel on Franklin Avenue opened in largely Hasidic South Williamsburg last year.
Another
new arrival will be the Hotel BPM – for "Beats Per Minute – in Sunset
Park. The 76-room boutique hotel is the brainchild of a celebrity
DJ-turned-hotelier, DJ Bijal, whose tunes will be featured through much
of the complex, although it promises not to be too loud so it would
intrude on neighbors.
