Super-luxury hotel Baccarat, long a dream of Starwood Capital founder Barry Sternlicht, is coming to New York.
The 45-story hotel/condo tower being developed by Sternlicht and Tribeca Associates will be flagged with the 5-star name, according to a persuasive source — a city Department of Environmental Protection permit at the site that calls the project “Baccarat.”
In the past few weeks, the Buildings Department also gave final approval to the tower at 20 W. 53rd St., across from MoMA, with some 120 hotel rooms on floors 4 to 12 and luxury condos above them.
Excavation is going full-bore at the former (and future) Donnell Library site, currently a gaping hole in one of Midtown’s most glamorous blocks. The New York Public Library will have 29,000 square feet on the new tower’s lower floors to replace its old branch. The NYPL planned to sell the property to Orient-Express Hotels, which in turn sold the purchase contract to Starwood Capital last year. The project is to open in 2014.
No rendering is available. The developers have declined to identify the new hotel. But five weeks ago, we wrote the “smart money” was on Baccarat, a brand linked to the fabled crystal house and to which Starwood Capital’s SH Group holds the license.
Over the weekend, industry blogger Andrew Calvo wrote that the Baccarat name just popped up on Starwood Capital’s website next to a March 2011 press release about the then-unidentified project — so our call was “confirmed,” Calvo said.
That seemed too easy, but we found the Baccarat name on a stroll past the site.
Sternlicht has tried to get the brand off the ground for years. Plans for Baccarat resorts in Hawaii, Atlanta and Anguilla were put on hold after the 2008 crash.
Colliers PKF hotel analyst John Fox said yesterday West 53rd Street “is a prime 5-star location.” He said the Manhattan market can easily accommodate another luxury hotel when the classiest properties are commanding up to $1,000 a night per room.
The Baccarat tower is expected to cost around $400 million. Skidmore Owings & Merrill’s T.J. Gottesdiener is the architect of record, while Enrique Norten is reportedly the design architect.
Tribeca Associates, the lead developer, didn’t get back to us.
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Opportunistic Broad Street Development decided the time was right to take the plunge into rental apartments. The firm led by Raymond Chalme and Daniel Blanco just bought two mid-rise properties for $85 million — 210 and 220 E. 22nd St.
The adjacent doorman buildings have 208 units, 100 percent occupied at market rents. The seller was GID Investment Advisers.
Chalme acknowledged that Broad Street is best known for the 1.5 million square feet of office space in three towers it’s bought since 2004, including 61 Broadway.
But “we diversify as we find opportunities,” he said. Last summer, Broad Street quietly bought the former Sullivan Street home of the Children’s Aid Society, which Chalme calls a “development site” that would be “respectful of its Greenwich Village surroundings.”
Chalme said the East 22nd Street pair will stay rental. As current tenants move out, he expects the buildings to draw young newcomers to town who work for tech companies like Google and for hospitals nearby — an “overlooked” market niche.
“We hope Wall Street stays strong, but meanwhile, the tech industry has helped the city keep jobs,” Chalme said.
The East 22nd Street buildings, full of studios and 1-bedrooms, are the right size for those just starting out. Some $2 million in capital improvements are in the works.
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A real restaurant is coming to leafy Riverdale, the high-income northern Bronx neighborhood that’s historically a dead zone for dining.
Erick Caceres this month will open Oregano Bar & Bistro, a 3,000-square-foot, lavishly-designed, “Franco-Iberian” eatery at 3524 Johnson Ave. It will have 133 indoor seats and generous outdoor seating as well.
Caceres founded Mamajuana Cafe in Inwood, so successful it’s been widely franchised, although he’s no longer involved.
The rent is $14,000 a month under a 15-year triple-net lease from landlord Friedland Properties — the same Friedland that owns much of Madison Avenue.
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Things are kicking into gear for Cornell University’s new Roosevelt Island campus. Cornell has already tapped Tishman Construction to handle preliminary work on the $2 billion, 10-acre project, where buildings are to begin rising in 2014 and open by 2017. Cornell’s proposal earned it free city-owned land and $100 million in public funding.