NEW YORK | 132 West 28th Street (Aloft Hotel) | 326 FT | 32 FLOORS

[chris08876]

New Jersey developer plans to build 32-story hotel in Chelsea

New Jersey developer Frank Ng is planning to build a 32-story hotel at 132 West 28th Street in Chelsea.

According to a permit application filed with the Department of Buildings, Ng is looking to build a 203-key hotel. Plans call for 95,158 s/f of commercial space and 30,086 s/f of residential space. If approved as proposed, the tower would be 326 feet tall.

The planned structure will have eight rooms each between floors four to 17 and between floors 19 to 28. There will be three rooms on the 29th floor and four rooms on the third floor. Ng plans to install a hotel lounge and bar at the ground floor and a fitness center on the second floor. There will also be conference rooms and a club on the 30th floor.

The site previously contained a five-story rental property, according to StreetEasy. Ng bought the building under the name 28th Street Properties for $14.07 million in 2007.

The property was part of a West 28th Street assemblage that Ng put up for sale in 2014. The adjacent buildings, located at 132-144 West 28th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, had an asking price of $120 million. Once it’s built, the property will be competing with the nearby Ace and NoMad hotels.

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rew-online

[chris08876]

Credit: JC_Heights

[chris08876]

Shanghai Commercial Bank Provides $60M Construction Package for Chelsea Hotel Project

New Jersey-based investor Frank Ng has nabbed a $60 million package from Shanghai Commercial Bank to begin construction on his planned 32-story residential hotel at 132 West 28th Street in Chelsea, according to records filed today with the New York City Department of Finance.

The package includes a $43 million building loan and a $17 million project loan, property records show. Shanghai Commercial Bank Senior Vice President and Manager Timothy Chan, with Vice President Nim Chi Lau, signed the loan documents. The deal closed on May 31.

In July 2017, permits were filed with the New York City Department of Buildings to erect a 203-key, 326-foot-tall residential hotel with roughly 96,000 square feet of commercial space and 31,000 square feet of residential space. JWC Architects was listed in permits as the architect of record. Real Estate Weekly first reported on the permits for the planned development last year.

The project will house eight rooms on each floor between the fourth and 17th floors and between floors 19 through 28. The 29th floor will have three rooms and the third floor will have four.

The site has 240,000 square feet on which to build and the finished product will include a hotel lounge and bar at the ground floor, a fitness center on the second floor and conference rooms and a club on the 30th floor.

Ng acquired the property along with a number of adjacent lots in December 2007 for just over $14 million, property records show, and then later moved to sell the assemblage—located from 132-144 West 28th Street—in 2014. Eventually, the five-story, 15-unit apartment building previously at 132 West 28th Street was approved for demolition in April 2014.

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Commercial Observer

[chris08876]

Aloft Hotel to Soar at 132 West 28th Street

At the beginning of the year, all anyone knew about the hotel coming to 132 West 28th Street was that it would rise 326 feet and 32 stories high and contain 203 rooms. More recently, a rendering of a glassy edifice revealed that Aloft will tower above its neighbors. New Jersey-based developer Frank Ng is at the helm, and Peter Poon Architects is the designer on record.
According to Real Estate Weekly, the ground floor will be home to a bar and lounge, presumably Aloft’s signature W XYZ. Several stories up, the building’s incredible height promises panoramic views for a 30th-floor club. Additional amenities will include a fitness center and outdoor terrace on the second floor and a business center on the third floor.

Aloft’s newest Manhattan outpost will rise between its Downtown and Harlem locations on a particularly hospitality-heavy block. This stretch between Sixth and Seventh Avenues is already home to a Hilton Garden Inn, Hyatt House, and Fairfield Inn & Suites. A few doors from the site, two Marriott hotels will occupy a 45-story building designed by Gene Kaufman at 140 West 28th Street. A Moxy hotel is rising at the end of the block. Ace Hotel, which is considered to have kicked off the NoMad hospitality boom, is two blocks away.

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City Realty

[Busy Bee]

Another kick-ass setback thanks to the NYC sky exposure plane zoning code. SCORE!

[antinimby]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Another kick-ass setback thanks to the NYC sky exposure plane zoning code. SCORE!

The problem is that the street wall requirement has a max but no min. Thus, having a one story "arcade" which is often just the covered entrance of the hotel, can be used to meet the street wall requirement.

If NYC wants to fix this problem, they could just change the min and max of the street wall requirement.

[Busy Bee]

Too busy chopping down Tower Verre.

[chris08876]

Excavation is occurring.

[chris08876]

Credit: Michael Young via NYY

[giantSwan]

is this another set-back?

Please say no....

[chris08876]

Oh yeah, big time set-back. Set-backs for all!

[chris08876]

Foundation work is occuring. This reminds me a lot of the Moxy Chelsea Hotel, the design.

[chris08876]

This is hauling!


Credit: [*]JC_Heights

[chris08876]

Credit: NYY

[NYer34]

This whole neighborhood used to be fundamentally nice, even if the buildings needed a powerwash and a slightly more upscale retail mix.

Unfortunately with the proliferation of Kaufman and Poon set-back budget hotels it's becoming pretty awful.

The city really needs to get serious about protection of pre-WWII structures before swaths of it look like the high-rise shanty-towns of Hong Kong...

[Busy Bee]

The setback building code...

When is this going to be addressed? It's ruining streets all over the city!

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by NYer34

This whole neighborhood used to be fundamentally nice, even if the buildings needed a powerwash and a slightly more upscale retail mix.

Unfortunately with the proliferation of Kaufman and Poon set-back budget hotels it's becoming pretty awful.

Wait, what? Are you referring to like 1900 or something?

This neighborhood was terrible, one of the worst in Manhattan, until maybe 20-25 years ago. The neighborhood's rise coincided with the proliferation of boutique hotels on former parking lots and taxpayers. Broadway was basically a third-world bazaar of questionable legality, now it's getting Ritz Carlton and other luxury hotel towers.

[NYer34]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Wait, what? Are you referring to like 1900 or something?

This neighborhood was terrible, one of the worst in Manhattan, until maybe 20-25 years ago. The neighborhood's rise coincided with the proliferation of boutique hotels on former parking lots and taxpayers. Broadway was basically a third-world bazaar of questionable legality, now it's getting Ritz Carlton and other luxury hotel towers.

You're confusing two very different things:
1. The underlying architecture, built environment and street presence of a neighborhood, and
2. The quality of tenants and retail in a neighborhood

Your thinking above is the exact same thinking that drove the innumerable examples of "urban renewal" in the '50s and '60s ... and that left us with all sorts of atrocities in the built environment for the sake of slightly nicer tenants (for a few years - until the crappy modernist replacements lost their sheen and wound up more decrepit, much more quickly, than the tenements they replaced).

[patriotizzy]

Originally Posted by NYer34

You're confusing two very different things:
1. The underlying architecture, built environment and street presence of a neighborhood, and
2. The quality of tenants and retail in a neighborhood

Your thinking above is the exact same thinking that drove the innumerable examples of "urban renewal" in the '50s and '60s ... and that left us with all sorts of atrocities in the built environment for the sake of slightly nicer tenants (for a few years - until the crappy modernist replacements lost their sheen and wound up more decrepit, much more quickly, than the tenements they replaced).

I read Crawford's comment and face-palmed. Complete lack of reading comprehension, or is it a lack of critical thinking? Not sure, but you are right on about that kind of "thinking" (or lack there of) is what is killing the beauty in building's street presence, for the sake of high-end tenants/owners. It's not even an argument against gentrification, but simply a matter of respecting the beauty and energy that well-made, good-intention, designs bring to the neighborhood.

[mrnyc]

right, lets praise the banal people boxes that went up on sixth ave years ago and overfocus on two blocks of broadway being upscaled as ‘nomad,’ when meanwhile kaufman, poon, kondylis, chang and the gang are wrecking every intact side street wall with this setback cheap hotel garbage.