Posted Oct 19, 2020, 2:59 AM
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https://nypost.com/2020/10/18/roosev...ng-developers/
Developers eyeing coveted Roosevelt Hotel site
The Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan and Jennifer Lopez, who starred in "Maid in Manhattan" which was shot at the hotel.
By Steve Cuozzo
October 18, 2020
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Last week’s news that the historic Roosevelt Hotel was closing had New Yorkers teary-eyed and developers drooling.
The historic, nearly 100-year-old Roosevelt announced on Oct. 12 that it would be checking out for good at the end of the month because it could no longer survive the pandemic. Longtime owner Pakistan International Airlines said it has “currently no plans for the building” after that. But that hasn’t stopped tongues from wagging over the real estate at 45 E. 45th St., which takes up the whole block between Madison and Vanderbilt avenues and between East 45th and 46th streets.
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Surely, it will be missed as the setting for Guy Lombardo’s New Year’s Eve ballroom performances and for its atmospheric public spaces. But it’s the property’s potential that is tantalizing developers, who’ve been circling it for years as the roughly 43,000-square-foot site can support a new building much larger than the current 18-story one.
The Roosevelt lies within the Vanderbilt Corridor rezoning area, which preceded wider East Midtown rezoning. A new building in the corridor may be taller and have much more floor area than an existing one subject to city approval, depending on public amenities provided by owners and other considerations.
Sources said PIA paid off all of the Roosevelt’s debt shortly before the closing announcement. However, buyer wannabes might be out of luck. PIA seems likely to convert the property into a Class A office tower in a joint-venture partnership with a development company.
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Asked if the Roosevelt could be revived as a born-again luxury inn, a hotel dealmaker who didn’t want to be identified scoffed, “The office market will rebound a lot sooner than the hotel market.”
Pakistani aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan last week termed chatter about a sale “misleading” and “speculative” and said there were no plans to unload the hotel.
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In 2017, when PIA was weighing options for the hotel due to poor returns, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said his government considered the Roosevelt an important historical property and told PIA to forget about selling.
The venerable inn was the setting for scenes from “Wall Street,” where Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gekko, delivered his “Greed is good” speech in the ballroom. “Maid in Manhattan” with Jennifer Lopez and many other films also shot scenes there.
Cushman & Wakefield investment-sale wizard Doug Harmon, who is not involved at the Roosevelt, described its desirability for office use: “The Grand Central submarket maintains one of the longest average tenant tenures in the city. As the city recovers, there will be an increased desire for offices near mass transit or train lines to ease commute times. Nobody is coming out of 2020 with an increased desire for longer commutes.”
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https://nayadaur.tv/2020/10/roosevel...hould-be-sold/
Roosevelt Hotel Is A White Elephant That Should Be Sold
Shajeel Zaidi
October 18, 2020
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It was originally the Grand Dame of Madison Avenue but of course they restyled it to the Grand Dame of New York. And that too is a chapter which has ended, for the historic hotel has announced that is it going to shut its doors. It could not withstand the economic shock induced by the pandemic. The hotel market in the United States and Europe suffered by the onslaught of Airbnb and the virus blew to smithereens whatever remained of it. If the government of our beleaguered nation was ever thinking of selling this gem of a property, this is certainly not the right time.
The Roosevelt was where the legendary hotelier, Conrad Hilton, had a presidential suite because he preferred the magnificence and splendour of its rooms over Waldorf Astoria and The Plaza – some of his other cocoons of leisure. Now, it is a rustic old hotel, with “burns on the rugs, peeling wallpapers, and broken tiles in tiny bathrooms.” The grand dame may be decaying now because the management is out of cash to spend on refurbishing but the iconic building is where movies such as “Man on The Ledge” and “Wall Street” were filmed. Its aura of grandeur may be diminishing but it still has a very prime location, only minutes of walk away from the Central Park, Time Square, and the high-end stores on Fifth Avenue. Pray tell, what else do tourists come to New York for? It was once also connected to the Grand Central via an underground pathway. Even now, the station is only half a block away
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.....the Cabinet Committee made the right decision to cancel the sale of the Roosevelt Hotel for the time being given the current market situation. But the real fear is that the August event might never happen, not because it may or may not be financially feasible for the government but because we have been led to have an emotional attachment to a hotel which for all intents and purposes is just that – a hotel amongst countless others in the world. And that too which has hardly ever been cashflow positive for PIA.
Even the last government was too scared to push the button. In the words of former PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at that time, it was part of the “cultural heritage” of Pakistan. Of all the reasons he could have given and all the words he could have chosen, this is what he said! It may be in our collective psyche to bring our nationalism and false sense of pride in all matters, but Pakistan is not like Qatar whose sovereign wealth fund has $300 billion to invest and can afford to buy and maintain the New York’s Plaza Hotel and even St Regis. We are a cash starved, debt strapped country which cannot afford to divest $125 million from our meager resources into a white elephant called The Roosevelt.
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Last edited by NYguy; Oct 19, 2020 at 3:14 AM.
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