Two-in-One Hotel Tower to Rise 67 Stories on Broadway
Tuesday, January 4, 2011, by Pete Davies
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The new year is looking up, and rising to the occasion is a new twin pack of hotels from
Marriott set to grow at Broadway and West 54th Street. The site,
1717 Broadway, is where developer Harry Gross and his Granite Broadway Development team have been
putting things in place over the past decade by
buying up the neighbors and gathering air rights from nearby theaters. The 10,000-square-foot lot will be home to a
716-foot, 67-story tower from architect
Nobutaka Ashihara. That will make this Marriott one of the tallest hotels in town, just 35' shorter than the the Mandarin Oriental at the Time Warner Center, and more than 120' taller than the Trump International.
The long-term plan at 1717 Broadway. >>
An
Ashihara brochure [pdf] describes the plan as "
two independent hotels with separate characters, selected service and extended stay, vertically stacked." Renders show a grove of trees on top, encircling the mechanicals, which might best be viewed from the heights of Christian de Portzamparc's new Carnegie 57,
now rising to 953 feet just a few blocks away. Vistas from up high here should be spectacular, which sort of explains why they've dubbed this the
Marriott Central Park.
Down low along Broadway, just north of where David Letterman does his shtick and backing up to the stalled site at
250 West 55th Street, the Frankentower will present a six-story block in glass with retail, restaurants and hotel lobby. The Buildings Department has approved the plan and the
Schedule A lays out the room scheme. Rising above the base will be a
Courtyard Inn, covering floors 7-31, with 14 rooms per floor. On top of that will be a 30-story
Residence Inn with 9 rooms per floor. The two-in-one combo will offer visitors the option of long term stays,
a profitable package popular with both hoteliers and guests, especially in these budget conscious times.
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2011/0...adway.php#more