A large development site on Duffield Street between Willoughby Street
and the Fulton Mall was sold for $9 million on Oct. 11 to a prominent
hotel developer based in Queens.
The properties at 216-228 Duffield St., which include a three-story building
with a retail shop, leased until 2007, and a parking lot, leased until
2009, may bring the first tall luxury hotel into the area, which was recently
rezoned under the Downtown Brooklyn Plan to allow for office and other
skyscrapers.
Though broker Brian Leary, whose Massey Knakal agency has aggressively
landed many clients in the Downtown Brooklyn area, says the property is
well-suited for retail and office space, he had no idea what developer
Sam Chang, of McSam Ltd., a development company based in Rego Park, Queens,
had planned.
“I think the potential is there for them,” he said. “They
predominantly own hotels, but they also do office space, retail and residential.”
Leary himself has closed 12 deals downtown, selling nearly 2 million square
feet to be developed.
“There’s been inquiries [about downtown] from several national
hotel chains,” he said, but didn’t know of any moving in at
the moment. He said he’d had inquiries for everything “from
boutique hotels, or the several-hundred-unit corporate-style hotels.”
The sold land has 180,000 build-able square feet of space, leaving it
limited to a smaller hotel, if in fact that is something Chang is considering.
Massey Knakal identified the buyer as Metro One Hotel, which is one of
the independent hotels Chang started, and may be the name of the new development,
when it arrives, if he doesn’t build an office building there.
“If Sam bought it, it’s going to be a hotel,” said broker
Frank Profeta, from Metro-One Real Estate, in Medford, N.Y.
The hotels, he said, were named after his agency, which used to do business
in the metropolitan area.
“He just liked that word, Metro,” said Profeta, who offered
some insight to what potential projects may hold.
“What Sam typically will do is make a Comfort Inn or Quality Inn,”
he said, or continue with his line of Metro One Hotels limited liability
companies, which change in numbers. For example, a Metro Three is a Howard
Johnson Express Inn on East Houston Street in Manhattan.
When Profeta learned of the new development company name, “McSam,”
he laughed.
“That guy’s got an ego bigger than his buildings.”
Chang, who is McSam Hotel LLC’s founder and owner, also owns MikeSam
Construction Corporation, and, based on Internet searches, also own the
firm Sam Chang Architects Ltd., which has offices in Honolulu, Hawaii
and Beijing, China.
In April, Chang was named “Developer of the Year” by Hilton
Hotels Corporation for developing the first Hilton Garden Inn to make
it to Manhattan.
