How suite it is!
The Bossert Hotel is set to reopen at the end of this summer — some six years later than its owners originally planned.
The swanky Montague Street lodge will have a soft opening at the end of August and be in full swing by the beginning of September, its new manager told Community Board 2’s Health, Environment, and Social Services Committee at its May 1 meeting.
“We’re scheduled to soft open around the end of August, so the official opening will be around Labor Day,” said general manager Aliya Huey.
The 110-year-old inn sits at the corner of Hicks Street and will reopen with 280 rooms, a rooftop restaurant and bar with an outdoor deck on the 14th floor looking out toward the Brooklyn Promenade, two grand ballrooms, and a café and bar located in the ground floor lobby, according to Huey.
The freshly-minted manager also told the committee the hotel will employ approximately 180 people.
Developer David Bistricer of Clipper Equity and real-estate tycoon Joseph Chetrit bought the Italian Renaissance-style property for $81 million from the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2012 and initially planned to reopen it the following year.
Restoring the building — once known as Brooklyn’s Waldorf Astoria — to its former glory took longer than anticipated, the man managing the makeover told this paper last year.
The hotel hit another bump when the owners parted ways with their hotel managers, the Argentine firm Fën Hotels, which also ran the Dazzler Brooklyn on Flatbush Avenue Ext. at Tillary Street, which has since been renamed the Tillary Hotel under managers Jam 26 Hotels and which Chetrit has a majority stake in, according to The Real Deal.
Huey also heads up the Downtown hotel and told the community group she will be in charge of both establishments under the same management company, but added that the luxe Brooklyn Heights lodge will target more well-heeled patrons.
“The Tillary has more of a younger crowd, whereas Bossert will be higher rates. It will be more corporate clients and we’re aiming toward a five-star hotel,” she said.
The committee gave its purely advisory recommendation for the State Liquor Authority to approve Huey’s liquor license application for the hotel’s watering holes, which had expired due to the long delays in the inn’s opening.
