Out-of-town parents wanting to visit their hipster children in Williamsburg will soon have a 75-room boutique hotel to stay at in the neighborhood.
Jed Walentas, president of the DUMBO-based Two Trees Management, confirmed last week that the company plans to convert an old industrial building at 80 Wythe Avenue and North 11th Street into a hotel.
Walentas dropped the hotel plans as an aside in a talk he gave about Downtown Brooklyn’s residential real estate market at last week’s Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable luncheon held at the Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont Street.
Walentas said the project is still 18 months off, and refused to elaborate on further plans for the hotel.
According to a city Department of Buildings (DOB) spokesperson, Two Trees took out a building permit on the project June 26.
The plans call for the five-story structure to be increased to eight stories with a rooftop mezzanine, according to the DOB spokesperson.
According to DOB filings, the project also calls for the building next door to be demolished and ultimately become part of the hotel.
The property is zoned for light manufacturing, allowing for a hotel to be built there without any city approval.
Despite the coming of a new hotel in Williamsburg, the projected boomtown for the hotel industry in Brooklyn is being somewhat deflated due to the faltering economy.
Sean Hennessey, a hotel industry expert and CEO of Lodging Advisors, also spoke at the luncheon, and explained that the borough which was once expecting more than between 3,000-4,000 hotel rooms can now expect about 2,000 rooms in the near future.
“There were 25 [hotel] projects being considered, but now some of those are being tabled or reconsidered because of the economy,” Hennessey said.
Hennessey said there are currently about 1,000 hotel rooms in the borough, and about six or seven hotels in the pipeline that already have financing.
These hotels – mainly in Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg – should open in the next three years, he said.
Other proposed hotels may have a hard time getting financing due to the economy, he said.
Hennessey said building a hotel in Coney Island presents some challenges, and would be helped from improvements to infrastructure.
Particularly, transit travel time to Manhattan would have to be minimized, he said, and a hotel would also be helped with further development of the area.
Hennessey said a Coney Island hotel could also benefit if it had meeting hall amenities that would appeal to commercial travelers.
Then with a rejuvenated ambiance and support services it would also attract tourists, he said.
