By Ronda Wist and George Calderaro, FRIENDS Board members

New York City’s many large, older hotels are assets to the city. For example, the Surrey Hotel on East 76th Street in the Upper East Side Historic District, designed almost a century ago by Schwartz and Gross is being renovated into a luxury hotel and residential condominium units. Bravo!

The administration should enact a policy to facilitate converting them into permanent housing as part of its overall housing efforts. If considered housing resources, these hotels could become part of a nuanced solution to the housing shortage. In the midst of the current housing crisis, we wonder why developers demolish viable hotel buildings? The most egregious recent example is the historic Hotel Pennsylvania. Now its 2,000 rooms and bathrooms within livable floor-to-ceiling heights are rubble--a vacant lot for corporate events.

The City must rethink existing hotel buildings for New Yorkers who need permanent housing. If owners of vacant, early and mid-20th century hotels believe that hotel use is viable, the transient uses should remain. Old hotels, some with contemporary interiors and others with historic interiors thrive all over the world. Yet the Wellington Hotel is slated for demolition to make way for a new hotel building, wasting money and material while risking that its prime midtown site will become yet another vacant lot for years.

NYC has a brilliant history of adaptive reuse and specifically, years of proven success at renovating formerly fashionable hotels. If an owner believes that the building cannot support transient hotel rooms, the structure should be converted to housing. Decades ago, the former Vanderbilt, Croyden, McAlpin and Paris hotels—among others—were converted to residential use. The Prince George Hotel houses formerly homeless adults in its magnificent building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Now the buildings along the Lexington Avenue hotel corridor, as well as the Carnegie Hall grouping look forlorn. Older hotel buildings are simply not soft sites. Often well-located near public transportation, the hotels are often proximate to residential neighborhoods with suitable infrastructure such as grocery stores and schools. It would take work to update and redesign the interiors of these solid buildings, but the environmental and aesthetic payoff would be huge. Ironically, hotels such as The Roosevelt look to be awaiting demolition at the very same time the city is considering where and how to locate new housing. In a rare example of forward-thinking adaptive reuse, it was recently announced that the Stewart Hotel will be converted into 625 residential units after being reprieved from the Vornado Realty “Penn District” wrecking balls.

The City should facilitate promote the reuse of these buildings—with the help of unions, philanthropists, commercial institutions, architects. We understand that it would require new financing mechanisms and zoning and building code modifications. Some hotels would be perfect as contemporary SROs and co-living spaces; others could be converted to family and single- apartments. Older hotel buildings tend to have large meeting spaces that could be repurposed for community facility or commercial uses. All New Yorkers deserve to live in beautiful buildings. The bricks and granite have stood for 100 years and with proper care, can stand for another century.

These buildings are assets to the city. No need to demolish and excavate and wait. If New York is serious about affordable housing, New York needs to take a serious look at hotel buildings.

June 2024