Hotelier Sam Chang has sold his barely three-month-old Comfort Inn Hotel for more than $22 million.
Magna Hospitality, the Rhode Island-based firm that has managed the Comfort Inn Brooklyn Bridge since its opening in December, purchased the 105-room hotel from Chang for $22.27 million, or $212,047 per room.
According to city records, Chang acquired the six-story property, at 279 Butler St. (between Third Avenue and Nevins streets) in 2004 for $800,000.
Chang would not comment for this story.
But in a press release, Magna CEO Bob Indeglia cited the borough’s “renaissance” as a reason to buy into the expanding hotel market.
Indeglia is hardly the only one to sense opportunity in the borough’s growing popularity with tourists. As The Brooklyn Paper reported in July, the borough has seen scores of new hotels open for business, from the Atlantic Motor Inn in Crown Heights to the 282-room expansion of the Brooklyn Marriot in Downtown Brooklyn.
Chang alone has plans for 600 more rooms in the borough, according to a recent report in the Real Deal. Aside from the much-talked-about 200-room hotel planned for the corner of Nevins and Schermerhorn streets, Chang will build two hotels in Sunset Park: an 80-room hotel on 38th Street, between Third and Fourth avenues, and a 320-room Comfort Inn on 59th Street at Third Avenue. Both are slated to open in 2008.
With room rates starting between $170 to $250 a night at the Comfort Inn Brooklyn Bridge, it’s not hard to understand the appeal.
“We’re in our third month, and we are picking up business every day, getting busier and busier, and we are trying to tell people that Brooklyn is not just on the outskirts of Manhattan, but it is a destination,” said Rebekah Allen, the hotel’s director of sales.
Last week, the hotel was sold out for four of seven days.
Magna also manages Chang’s Holiday Inn Express, which opened in 2006 on Union Street, between Third and Fourth avenues. It is unclear whether Chang intends to sell that property too.
