Garden-Themed Hotel Coming to Old Antiques Garage Spot in Chelsea
By Lauren Elkies Schram November 12, 2015 5:07 pm
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Fans of the shuttered weekend-only Antiques Garage Flea Market and the neighboring flower district may find some solace in the design of the hotel coming to Chelsea.
“We’re doing a limestone façade for three floors,” said developer Jeffrey Lam of Lam Generation, who is building an otherwise glass 38-story Renaissance Hotel at 112 West 25th Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. “It was the Antiques Garage [so] the concept for this hotel was bringing back the flea market finds and keeping a garden-themed hotel.”
Architect Nobutaka Ashihara’s design for the four-star, 300-room hotel includes three setbacks for guest suite balconies with greenery visible from the street. The hotel will include a ground-floor restaurant, a rooftop bar (with more plantings) and an outdoor rooftop swimming pool, Mr. Lam told Commercial Observer.
The beloved Antiques Garage which was open on weekends at the site of a parking garage, closed in the summer of 2014 after an 11-year run. Mr. Lam, the president and chief executive officer at Lam Generation, purchased the property from Extell Development Company a year prior for $67.5 million.
With hotel rooms averaging 350 square feet, nightly rates at the 140,000-square-foot hotel will be about $400 per night, Mr. Lam said.
Soho Properties is buying the adjoining development site at 113-117 West 24th Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue from Mr. Lam for $60 million, according to Soho Properties Chairman and CEO Sharif El-Gamal. The deal is slated to close at the end of this month, Mr. Lam said. Mr. Lam is retaining the portion of the site where the Renaissance Hotel will be erected, as The Real Deal previously reported.
“We got a great offer on it,” Mr. Lam told CO about the off-market deal. “We decided why don’t we just part with it.”
Lam Generation recently obtained its demolition permits and hopes to commence work this month. The project is slated for completion in 2018.
