Intercontinental hotel - Nassau St. (by the horrible Gene Kaufman)

[antinimby]

Intercontinental Hotel
Nassau St. (Financial District)

From Gene Barfman's...err...Kaufman's website:

A 55-story tower with an aspect ration of 10:1 gives superb views through an glass curtain wall to 360 luxury rooms. The multiple floors of public space house two restaurants, conference facilities and spa, crowned by a rooftop pool 500 feet above street level.

http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/6811/intercontinentalsh4.jpg

[londonlawyer]

One wouldn't expect Intercontinental to hire schleps like Chang and Kaufman to build its hotels. Where on Nassau is it? Aren't these schmucks building this hideous green brick POS on Nassau and Maiden?

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/9731/20maidenlane1ww4.jpg

Also, why would I/C build a stunning hotel in SF and a POS in NY?
http://images3.ichotelsgroup.com/cq/content/dec/teaser/ic/1/en/lp/soon/mosha.ContentPar.0017.Image.gif

[ramvid01]

Well be greatful its one color, and not a psychodelic collage. :rolleyes:

[antinimby]

True. The toilet is half full.

[antinimby]

One wouldn't expect Intercontinental to hire schleps like Chang and Kaufman to build its hotels. Where on Nassau is it? Aren't these schmucks building this hideous green brick POS on Nassau and Maiden?Yes, they are the same ones and they're not slowing down either.

[BrooklynRider]

True. The toilet is half full.

Oh man, the title of this thread and your comment above have me rolling. Too funny.

[Stern]

I think the tall monstrosity is going at Pearl Street. Not Nassua. Browsing though Kaufman's website he has posted the proposal for Nassau, its shorter and ugly (surprise, surprise). Three Kaufman's proposed downtown, for shame.


http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=156622&postcount=1350

[sfenn1117]

^7 by my count. :mad:

[pianoman11686]

I agree, London. This is totally out of character with Intercontinental. And to think their other property in the city is the stunning Barclay.

The saving grace to this design is that there isn't any brick on the front facade, and hopefully they go with some decent glass. Hard to tell anything from Kaufman's cheap-looking rendering.

I assume the blank concrete wall goes up only as high as its neighbor to the right?

[Stern]

Unlike most Kaufman's this one will impact the skyline as the building in front of it is only 400 feet. It'll damage the classic NY downtown skyline along with 2 Gold Street.

[antinimby]

Also, why would I/C build a stunning hotel in SF and a POS in NY?Just continuing a trend...

So in Chicago the new InterContinental Hotel looks like this nice tall one...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/thumbnails/photo/2005-11/20263883.jpg

and their first one in NYC looks like this dump?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02052007/photos/biz034.jpg

The new Gene Kaufman?

[BrooklynRider]

I thought there's an InterContinental up by the Waldorf-Astoria in a classic pre-war building.

[stache]

S.F. has an extremely stringent architectural review process, while we have nothing of the kind.

[MidtownGuy]

Why don't we? We need it badly.
The only way you can make greedy developers spend more to give the city what it deserves is by forcing them. They want to do business here and make oodles of profit, they should be held up to standards. Otherwise, the appearance of the city goes to hell. The decent skyscrapers we do have from the past will drown in a sea of cheap and tacky Kaufmanesque crap. It's happening, and it will continue. They'll do what they can get away with. The tacky nouveau riche of New York have already demonstrated a willingness
to pay top dollar for units in buildings that look not much better than projects. It's time for intervention. New York has the world to compete with. Do we have pride and standards, or are we just cheap temple whores, turning tricks for any offered price and worshipping mammon?

[Derek2k3]

Isn't this planned for the empty lot at 115 Nassau Street? GKA's website indicates its on Nassau and the hotel planned for Pearl is on a corner with a larger footprint.

[sfenn1117]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/realestate/commercial/15sqft.html?_r=1&ref=yourmoney&oref=slogin

A quote from the article:

The Lam Group, another local development company, has a 660-room Sheraton under construction at 217 Pearl Street.

Shows that this is not on the same block as 2 Gold. 217 Pearl will be a 52 story tower, so this means the rendering in this thread is for yet another hotel, meaning there are two 50+ story Kaufman's coming to downtown. :mad: :mad: :mad:

[sfenn1117]

http://www.lamgroupnyc.com/hotels.htm

Scroll and there is a thumbnail of 217 Pearl....hard to tell but looks different than this one.....and there's plenty other crap set to rise.

I swear, these bafoons are going to end up building over a hundred of these things.

[Derek2k3]

That design of 217 Pearl was by Kevin Kennon Architects. I'm not sure if it's still in play since the permits now list Gene Kaufman.

At least hotels are easier to demolish than residences. We just have to wait 40 years for these things to crumble. This Intercontinental Hotel will loom over City Hall Park and hopefully Amanda in City Hall will have a direct southern view of its blank wall.

[Derek2k3]

hmm, double post...

Well here's the site...

[LeCom]

They need to get a better program than Photoshop to render buildings. And a lead architect that is not creatively challenged.

[londonlawyer]

hmm, double post...

Well here's the site...

There are also several empty buildings next to that lot that will be razed and redeveloped into a residential property. I thought that the whole thing (including the empty lot) was to be one project. Apparently not, however, because it's quite a large site, and yet this hotel's footprint is extremely small.

[Ninjahedge]

What's wrong with boxes? :crosseyed:

[stache]

Does anyone happen to know what used to be there?

[Harvick2933]

Aren't these schmucks building this hideous green brick POS on Nassau and Maiden?

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/9731/20maidenlane1ww4.jpg

Oh gosh, how much worse can you possibly get with building architecture than this childish bullcrap? Do Kaufman and Chang have the brains of a three-year old or what?!

As for this building, at first glance it definitely looks better than anything else those two babies have ever designed, but I don't think that so small of a site warrants such a tall tower. I would rather see a mid-rise plot filler (not designed by those two of course...) on this site than this building.

[stache]

In Manhattan 20 floors is mid-rise.

[londonlawyer]

According to the August 2007 edition of the realdeal.com, Chang has abandoned plans for this POS which was to rise at 115 Nassau! This is awesome news!

Only with Chang and Kaufman is there celebration when a project is cancelled!

Here's the article:

August 2007
McSam supersizes in Lower Manhattan
Hotelier building half of hotel rooms Downtown
By Alison Gregor


Sam Chang built a 65-room hotel at 320 Pearl Street, run by Hampton Inn. Sam Chang, CEO of McSam Hotel, is developing 1,570 rooms in Manhattan's Financial District, almost half the total rooms proposed for Lower Manhattan through 2009. But that doesn't seem to be thwarting other hotel developers.

"Even with all this information about hotels in the pipeline, I still get calls weekly from people who are interested in developing hotels down there," said Nicole LaRusso, vice president for planning and economic development at the Alliance for Downtown New York. "So I don't think the appetite for development of hotels has abated."

Downtown hotels saw the biggest rise in occupancy rates of all Manhattan markets last year, growing by 2.3 percent to 83.7 percent -- a figure that developers are keenly aware of. In a recent deal, the Economic Development Corporation last month announced it had chosen a developer, the Dermot Company, for the historic Battery Maritime Building, which will have a boutique hotel with 135 rooms.

Currently, there are about 2,197 hotel rooms in Lower Manhattan, according to the Alliance, and about 3,520 new hotel rooms have been proposed. However, the Downtown area is a business district with about 300,000 employees, meaning it can absorb the additional supply, according to boosters. Office space Downtown is getting filled up -- vacancy rates have slipped from 11.7 percent in June 2006 to 8.2 percent in June 2007, according to Colliers ABR -- which will help the hotel market.

"There are a lot of rooms coming down here, and this will be a big increase," said John Fox, a senior vice president at PKF Consulting, which tracks the hotel industry. "But if you look at office vacancies Downtown, they've dropped substantially in the last year or two."

And the number of tourists appears to be growing, LaRusso said. A visitors kiosk at the World Trade Center saw a 31.9 percent growth in visits during the week ending July 8, 2007, when visits reached 13,951, over the same week the year before.

Hoteliers have recognized that "if you're a visitor or tourist, there are not a lot of opportunities to stay in Lower Manhattan," LaRusso said. "One of the things that's really interesting is you're seeing hotels developed at every price point. So you've got limited-service hotels popping up in in-fill sites, to luxury hotel products being developed."

Chang is developing seven hotels in Lower Manhattan. The prolific developer's projects include:

* An independent boutique hotel with six floors and 45 rooms, at 130 Duane Street, just north of Chambers. It will open in the next two months and is owned by the Hersha Group.

* A hotel at 8 Stone Street with 42 floors and 400 rooms, to open in 2008. It will be a full-service hotel, potentially run by Doubletree, with a restaurant and 4,500 square feet of meeting space.

* Another full-service hotel, a Holiday Inn, at 99 Washington Street, with 36 floors and 371 rooms, also opening in 2008. It, too, will have a restaurant, as well as 500 square feet of meeting space.

* Chang also has an as-yet unflagged large full-service hotel to open in 2008 at 50 Trinity Place with 35 floors, 244 rooms and 250 square feet of meeting space.

* A planned hotel at 33 Beekman Street with 39 floors and 288 rooms, along with 3,000 square feet of meeting space. The project is not yet under construction but is anticipated to open some time in 2009.

* A Wyndham Garden that will open in 2008 at 20 Maiden Lane with 20 floors and 110 rooms. This is the only hotel Chang is doing in the Financial District that he intends to sell (see Pay it forward: More hoteliers build, and get out of the way).

* Chang also has a Holiday Inn Express with 26 floors and 112 rooms opening in 2008 at 124 Water Street.

The full-service hotels are something of a departure for Chang, who was one of the first developers to bring smaller, limited-service hotel brands to New York City. In the Financial District, Chang has already built a 65-room hotel at 320 Pearl Street, run by Hampton Inn.

The Financial District "is undersupplied from a full-service-hotel point of view," said Jeffrey Davis, an executive vice president with the hotels division at Jones Lang LaSalle. "More select-service type things -- that's where I've seen the bulk of development."

Chang said he believes the Financial District is still undersupplied with hotel rooms, but if all of the rooms now projected are completed, it could mean falling occupancy and room rates. He said he's actually backed off from one project (the purchase of 115 Nassau Street) and has put another one on hold: a 39-floor hotel that had been planned for 100 Greenwich Street.
"When I was acquiring land in that area, I was the only one doing that, and I did it at a reasonable price," he said. "The next thing you know, other people pop in. Now, that means you're [almost] tripling the room supply in the Downtown area, and I didn't recognize that until now."

Chang, who has already completed some 25 hotels in the city, has saturated other neighborhoods in Manhattan with his projects, including plans to build six hotels on a single block of West 39th Street, within sight of the Lincoln Tunnel.

[BrooklynRider]

With a design like that, I couldn't imagine InterContinental signing on as an operator. He is not building 4- or 5-star hotels.

[LeCom]

55 floors of a solid concrete wall. Exciting.

[londonlawyer]

55 floors of a solid concrete wall. Exciting.

Gladly, it won't be built. :D

[ASchwarz]

Why won't it be built? All the article said is that Chang has backed off.

He'll build it later, or sell and another developer will build on the site.

[DominicanoNYC]

I'm amazed by how unimaginative it is... wow. What a piece of crap.

[macreator]

I'm still perplexed at why Intercontinental would want to associate themselves with such an awful design for a hotel. Perhaps they finally took a look at a rendering and freaked out.