BROOKLYN — An observer of the Downtown Brooklyn scene who did not want to be identified asked Wednesday, “Who is going to use all those rooms?”
The person was reacting to a story the Eagle’s Linda Collins broke this week that the Cambria Suites Hotel people were coming to Downtown Brooklyn to add 300 new rooms to the area’s hotel reservoir.
As Joshua Muss remembers all too well, it was not long ago there were no hotel rooms in Downtown Brooklyn. Now there are reasonable prospects of 1,500 new ones. What has happened or better yet what is happening?
The easy answer, of course, is that hotel building is part of the building of the new Downtown Brooklyn, and that is a correct answer. If all that is happening weren’t happening, no one in their right mind would be creating hotel rooms.
The concern of the observer is that the critical mass leading to the use of hotel rooms hasn’t yet happened, although the prospects are so close as to almost become Brooklyn’s Big Tease.
New office buildings must be built. A thriving commercial center brings visitors more than any other activity. Because of its location, and clever promotion, the Marriott gets a lot of Manhattan spillover. Hotels in the “interior” will probably not benefit as much.
It is only a guess, but I believe two new office buildings, in addition to space already planned, would do the trick. One of those is slated for the corner of Fulton Street and Boerum Place, quite the proper place. This is planned by Josh Muss and could take up 800,000 square feet of space.
City Hall has to help with that particular site and with getting a second anchor tenant at another site, which is still unknown. We do know that the Albee Square site will have 150,000 square feet of new office space, again, at a good location, and there will be some office space at the Atlantic Yards.
Office buildings also bring retail and Downtown Brooklyn is “under retailed,” much more is needed. When the brownstone neighborhoods were turning around, more buying power at hand, it didn’t have any impact on the retail history downtown.
People tend to shop where they work, and if there are more workers, there will be more retail. No mystery.
The whole business of rezoning Downtown Brooklyn was to make it easier to compete with New Jersey by being able to more quickly build new office buildings. But Downtown Brooklyn now also has competition from the frenzied effort to fill up Lower Manhattan.
That is why it usually is worthwhile to follow the office vacancy numbers and rent levels of Midtown and to see how that plays in downtown Manhattan. Sooner or later, people have to start paying attention to Brooklyn.
The permanent housing boom in Downtown Brooklyn is working off a different dynamic (but if more office buildings come, more people will want to live Downtown), but both housing and offices here are greatly influenced by the city economy. If Wall Street breaks down, Downtown Brooklyn will slumber.
It is impressive, therefore, that a reasonably large number of hotel rooms are being built or planned; that is a confidence level that has to be encouraging to Downtown boosters.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
All materials posted on BrooklynEagle.com are protected by United States copyright law.
Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues.
So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net
Main Office 718 422 7400
