I'd like to make a few points here. I work directly across the square from this building and see it every day. The detailing is no doubt prewar and quite lovely but this is also something that, being New York, we enjoy an abundance of.
The building is falling apart. The pictures don't even get across how dilapidated it is. The windows that used to be behind the billboard are bricked up and the storefronts, formerly housing a Sbarro, a Tad's Steaks and a discount electronics store among others, have had all remnants of historic value removed and are themselves run down. The cost of a restoration that extensive may not be worth the expenditure.
Additionally, you must remember where the building is located. Prewar buildings in 21st-Century New York have an increasingly limited number of viable uses, really only residential and hospitality. No one in their right mind with the cash to drop on a Midtown apartment or condo is going to want to live on this corner, so that's out.
As far as a hotel conversion goes, restoration can actually interfere with the functions of a hotel located in this area. All newer hotels use their lower floors for common areas and conference space, which don't require windows, and therefore allow them to affix the LED signs the square is known for on that blank wall space, and that brings in cash from advertising. This is the most viable building use in Times Square, and most older buildings just can't accommodate that.
Also, I can tell you from experience at my job (in a restaurant attached to another hotel) that the outdoor restaurant/bar area at the top of the podium is going to be a gold mine. I cannot tell you how often I get guests coming in who ask where there's a rooftop bar in the area, and I have little to offer them. It's something missing from the Square that'd be a huge asset.
And before you worry that every historic building in the area is endangered, there are two restoration projects currently in progress, one on 46th and 7th, the I. Miller Building, and the hotel conversion on 42nd Street where the Gap is.
So let this happen. By all accounts it's an improvement.
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BUILD IT. BUILD EVERYTHING. BUILD IT ALL.
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