Big news for New York's luxury hotel scene: Sam Nazarian, the Los Angeles restaurant and nightclub owner, is looking to open an $85 million SLS Hotel in New York, the first in the city for the luxury brand.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Nazarian's company, SBE Entertainment Group LLC, is teaming with New York-based Moin Development Corp. on the 190-room project at 444 Park Ave. South, at 30th Street. They will gut and add on to an existing office building to construct a 20-story hotel with a rooftop bar, according to Nazarian, chairman and chief executive officer of SBE. It would be the third SLS Hotel in the U.S. and is slated to open by mid-2013, SBE said today in a statement.
Nazarian also wants to add SLS properties in uptown Manhattan and the Soho neighborhood and is scouting New York locations for Redbury, his new high-end, extended-stay brand.
SBE, which also owns Hyde nightclubs and the Katsuya and Cleo restaurant brands, has said it wants to build SLS into a chain of boutique hotels that would attract high-end leisure and business travelers. New York City hotels had an occupancy rate of 76 percent this year through April, the third-best among the top 25 U.S. markets, behind Miami and Oahu, Hawaii, according to Smith Travel Research Inc., based in Hendersonville, Tennessee.