The Wall Street Journal reports that football legend Emmitt Smith's company has city officials worried about the proposed Harlem Hyatt and the project may end up losing crucial financing. Back in June, the city's Economic Development Corporation granted $19.7 million in Recovery Zone Facility Bonds to subsidize the $81 million hotel planned for the corner of Lenox and 125th Street. One of the major caveats was that groundbreaking would happen by December 31 and last month was the reported date set for the groundbreaking.
Rolling into October, permit applications are still not listed on the DOB site and now the city has two other back up projects planned since the Recovery Zone money goes back to the federal government if not used by the end of the year. There will be a meeting on November 4th to review the alternative Brooklyn developments and Mr. Smith's company could not be reached for further comment:
LINK. Read more on the Harlem Hyatt in our past post:
LINK
This is a sad situation....
ReplyDeleteIs anybody surprised by this?
ReplyDeleteAt least the vacant lot got a clean up.
ReplyDeleteBut @Vic. . . no.
Yeah it doesnt take a cynic of Reynolds proportions to have seen this one coming.
ReplyDeleteDamn! That happened so fast I feel like I need a crash helmet! But...
ReplyDeleteGreat. The money will go to a Brooklyn project instead of a Harlem based one. What a shame if this doesn't work out.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to be naive, but it doesn't look like it's over yet.
ReplyDeleteGosh darnit, this makes me really angry. That site has everything going for it: it's a fourteen-minute express subway ride to Times Square, it's directly adjacent to a very high-income neighborhood, it's adjacent to another lower-income neighborhood that needs more services and jobs, and there's loads of foot traffic and interesting new developments all around. Why the heck shouldn't the project go forward? Gahahah!
ReplyDelete@ Anonymous. . .
ReplyDeletethis site is. . . "directly adjacent to a very high-income neighbourhood"
Where? Did I suddenly develop a very high income and miss it? Seriously, is this a typo?
Anon(1:39)- what "high-income" and "lower-income" neighborhoods are you referring to?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I think the harlem cheerleading has finally hit the wall. Did you ever think that maybe the neighborhood is not meant to become every other neighborhood in Manhattan. It seems to me like people are trying to justify their purchases of harlem brownstonwns and condos by hoping dearly the neighborhood will gentrify and look like every other neighborhood. Complete with whole foods and medium range hotels. Harlem could actually become something more than just a neighborhood over run with public housing, and an oppurtunity for middle class manhattanites to get a deal on an apartment they otherwise could not afford in the rest of manhattan if people stopped waiting for crappy hotels and big box stores and addressed the real issues of Harlem. Like what to do with all of the empty churches, like what to do about the drugs, litter and overun BBQ parks, and the schools. Y'all think more businesses and poorly built condos up here will make all of these things change. I forecast the development of harlem has reached its stride and will even subside... Get rid of some public housing, focus development of Harlem buildings already existing, turn the damn 125th street lot into a community garden. Want hotels? why not buy up brownstowns and have more bed and breakfasts. Communities are not made by simply bringing in people to spend money in architecturally insignifacnt new development, nor is it made with vast public housing complexes. Harlem change will only really happen from the inside out.
ReplyDelete@D and @Sanou's mum: I didn't mean to imply that the Mount Morris Park area was super-duper high-income--but it's indisputably among the ritzier quarters north of 110th St., and it's just around the corner from the proposed hotel site. As regards lower-income areas, well, most of the community directly to the north is working class. So, yeah, the project would sit right at a classically Harlem-ish crossroads where brownstoners and public housing tenants and federal employees and day laborers all share the same sidewalk.
ReplyDeleteAs for Westy's tirade above--I mean, sure, I agree. I don't happen to care much what they put on the site--but in a city where housing is pricey, employment is down, and the population is still growing, a big empty lot on prime real estate in a still-economically-developing neighborhood is an obscenity. So put a garden in. Heck, put in a shoe factory, give the folks jobs. Do whatever. But I don't think your little master plan is so inspired, either. (Least of all the part about getting "rid of some public housing...")
I wish all of these "quality of life" hysterics would had lived thru the 80's around here, let alone the 70's.
ReplyDeleteIt might have given them some perspective. That the urban poor haven't evaporated into a mist of Perrier just because a couple of condos have sold out doesn't mean things are failing.
Its just means nothing is easy and more will have to be done.
@Vic Vega: Here, here. Also: hilarious.
ReplyDeleteFact is I'll still be p****d if this doesn't get built with a Wholefoods to boot. I don't give a b******s about whys or why nots, just build the sodding thing.
ReplyDelete@Chris--I don't understand why you are so dead keen on having a great big hulking chain hotel here. And if I've been following this story correctly the Whole Foods fantasy is just that--a fantasy.
ReplyDeleteCertainly would be great to have something there that would produce jobs but I'm not so sure a ginoumous hotel is what we need.
The A loft has the better hotel model while this Hyatt has a better location. Harlem overnighters are not your Midwestern Americans here on a business trip, but more likely European or Japanese or a younger set, the whole boutique hotel is great for Harlem as with the European or Japanese or a younger set, Harem is definitely cool. Either way, a hotel will be great for local business as it brings dollars to the restaurants and other businesses. The big winners with a hotel would be any restaurants within walking distance, of which there a quite a few poised to benefit. Also, with the current hotel occupancy rates in Manhattan, a hotel cannot fail. I would not count this out too soon as it is a win win for Harlem and the investors.
ReplyDeleteAs for Harlem’s future, I predict it will not be middle , upper or lower class, but a mix of all these. Harlem is just too big to be one size fits all. The projects are not going away any time soon, there is affordable housing being built for those in the middle class and Harlem already has many stunning brownstone blocks and condos for the well heeled. The biggest change in Harlem is that it is now part of Manhattan. The trend over the last 20 years has been a seismic improvement over what was, that trend has certainly not peaked, just wait until the economy gets moving and below 110th street becomes more untouchable.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is most likely that the project is likely underestimating costs. Seriously...would you want to invest in a project that could easily cost significantly more than projected? Not all the investors will be able to cough up with additional funds- and poof- there goes all your cash.
ReplyDeleteThis was always a joke. The fact that the city granted them the conditional funds was nothing more than a sad indictment on the city. The project had no plans, no agreements, nothing more than a dream... and it was never going to go anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with both Westy and Westsider on many of their points. Most prominently I think Westsider has a point the ALoft model is a better model than the Hyatt. Most of those who are coming to Harlem to visit do tend to be Japanese or European tourist. I think we've got to be really careful about architectural integrity because without it what would tourist be coming to see? Surely they could get their fill of Jimmy Jazz, H&M, American Apparel, McDonalds and Burger King anywhere else in the city. It's the crumbling churches and brownstone shells that are we should be focusing our attention on first, in my humble opinion.
ReplyDeleteSure, one would argue that my argument is not benevolent and I want to turn Harlem into a tourist trap--I live here, and I don't. But we can't avoid the reality. This is, or should be a community first, and I while jobs are very important wouldn't we all benefit from job creation in other area's in hospitality first? What about more services, restaurants (that aren't soul food or "southern inspired", lounges/bars, bookstores (sorry Hue-Man I don't think cuts it) for the people who already live here? As for affordable housing, I think we are living in a NYC warp, while housing in Harlem may be more affordable than other parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, its far from affordable by any objective measure.
At the risk of having my virtual head handed to me on a virtual platter, I think that, at this juncture, tourists who want to stay in a hotel in Harlem are going to be the ones who say to their friends, "you stayed at a Mariott on 48th Street? Let me tell you about this boutique hotel we stayed at in Harlem. . . and we were going to eat at Sylvia’s but the concierge told us it was only for tourists Samuelsson’s new place. We saw women in these gorgeous African outfits and we saw a drug deal and we saw people playing dice on the street and we saw beautiful brownstones and we saw bombed out brownstones, etc." Not, we also stayed at at a Hyatt and there was a Starbucks on the corner. . .
ReplyDeleteI really can’t see a large group of Midwest tourists, probably already scared of New York, staying on 125th Street no matter how close the train is and a hotel as large as this proposed one is going to need big blocks of touristy white folk who are not scared to venture out after dark.
From my travels to Cuba I noticed a lot of foreign investers in hotel
ReplyDeletebusineses. Maybe that's where we can get it if U.S. investors have
cold feet about Harlem?