[hunser]

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/0...mes_square.php

CitizenM Budget Luxury Hotel Rising Near Times Square

CitizenM, the Dutch hotelier aiming for budget-minded travelers with an eye towards luxury, is building up at 218 West 50th Street, where 230 guest rooms will soon be welcoming some of the 50 gazillion visitors who come to town each year. The concept for the 19-story hotel is by Concrete, the Amsterdam firm that's put together a batch of hospitality sites for CitizenM in "target cities" worldwide. Concrete uses a modular system, "completely prefabricated in CitizenM's own production facility and subsequently transported to the building site, where they are assembled to create the hotel." What's rendered inside for the New York flagship near Times Square is a blend of bar and work-place lounge, perfect for cocktails and laptops with lots of room for communing with friends and fellow travelers.

Outside, the design shows a dark grid in metal, brick and glass, with big open patches for signage in lights. Above it all will be a roof-top bar, perched 250 feet up in the midtown sky, topped by a crown emblazoned with a slight twist on a classic phrase. Local firm Montroy Anderson DeMarco is the executive architect on the project, and they call the plan "ultra clean and simple." Hmmmm. Maybe the crazy images from Concrete got tossed—or lost in translation. The money behind this stack of fun and games comes from Brack Capital, the folks who brought us the cantilevered James New York in Soho. There's still no word when work will start on the downtown outpost of CitizenM, long planned but still stalled at the intersection of Delancey and the Bowery. (Demolition on the site appears to be coming soon.) The midtown site hopes to have rooms ready for citizens of the world by April 2013.