Call it Club Bed-ford!
Williamsburg is now an international tourist attraction, says a hotelier, and a new wave of huge luxury hotels are set to hit the once-hipster ’hood starting in 2016 to cater to the influx of gawking globetrotters.
“Williamsburg is extremely hot,” said Sebastian Maingourd, the general manager of the 183-room William Vale Hotel, which is set to open in April and begin accepting reservations by the end of this month. “If you go to France right now and you talk about Williamsburg, it’s really a brand.”
The futuristic 21-story lodging, which started shooting up on Wythe Avenue between N. 12th and N. 13th streets less than a year ago — right near from the Wythe Hotel, which first ignited the first boutique boarding-house boom in the neighborhood — will boast a rooftop park and pool, plus a ballroom and several restaurants.
The Vale is a few blocks from the also imminent nine-story, 160-room Williamsburg Hotel at N. 10th Street. The self-described “urban resort” is slated to include no less than six bars — including a nightclub in the basement and a cocktail bar inside a water tower on the roof — according to a Bedford and Bowery report. It will open in the spring.
Across the street will be the nine-story, 175-room Hoxton Hotel — an outpost of a chain that started in Shoreditch, London’s answer to Williamsburg — which broke ground a few months back.
Further afield, the M500 is currently rising behind the Kelloggs Diner at Metropolitan and Union avenues. The wedge-shaped building will crest at 14 stories, housing 188 hotel rooms, restaurants, and rooftop tennis and basketball courts, in addition to some residential units, according to plans filed with the city.
And All Year Management is planning a seven-story, 112-key hotel at White and McKibbon streets. The architect revealed new designs for the as-yet-unnamed property this week — which show a boxy white lodge balanced atop a graffiti-covered warehouse — and will include a shopping mall, restaurants, and bars, as first reported by Arch Daily. Those plans are still pending.
More hoteliers may soon have to look beyond Wythe Avenue to set up shop in the nabe — Mayor DeBlasio plans on making it difficult to open lodgings in specific district earmarked for industrial businesses, and one such zone covers Kent and Wythe avenues between N. Ninth and Dobbin streets.
