3,000 Queens hotel rooms on hold: delayed construction spotlight

By Atticus O’Brien-Pappalardo

More than 13 years ago, near the peak of a prior real estate boom, Flushing developers and brothers, Chris Jiashu Xu and George Xu teamed up with Betty Hsu to buy a parcel in Long Island City north of Queens Plaza for $12.75 million. A year later, in 2008, they filed plans for a large hotel.

Five blocks to the south, in October 2007, a Japanese hotel development firm acquired an assemblage of five parcels with an auspicious location adjacent to a busy No. 7 train station and a block from the tallest skyscraper in the outer boroughs, the Citigroup Center. In 2008, they, too, filed plans for a large hotel.

Yet, neither of these projects were ever permitted and both remain vacant lots today. And these projects are not the only large unbuilt hotel projects in Queens. There are at least nine projects of 50,000 square feet or more that were filed before January 2018 and have not received permits, according to a PincusCo analysis.

PincusCo Media has been taking an in-depth look at delayed development projects in the city to get an idea of which projects are taking longer to move forward.

For this analysis, PincusCo Media looked at hotel projects of 50,000 square feet or larger in Queens, pre-filed in 2018 or earlier, that have not yet been permitted. To qualify, the plans must still be active, meaning they have not been withdrawn by either the developer who filed them or by a different party who had since acquired the property. Additionally, no plans for a different new building can have been filed afterwards.

Keep an eye out for analyses on delayed hotel projects in the city’s other boroughs in the coming weeks.

Toyoko Inn Co. is a hotel chain headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, that has been around since the mid-1980s. The company, which specializes in no-frills business hotels, has been expanding rapidly since the 1990s and early 2000s. Once having locations nearly exclusively in its home country, the company has spread to occupy South Korea, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, France, and Germany.

In October of 2007, Toyoko Inn publicly set their eyes on expanding to NYC when they purchased five parcels, with addresses 24-05 to 24-19 Jackson Avenue for $17.75 million. The next year on May 9, 2008, plans were officially filed. The plans, pre-filed by Florence Rostami of Toyoko Inn, called for a 35-story, 362-foot tall, 184,500-square-foot hotel with 708 rooms at 24-19 Jackson Avenue. Reports on the number of rooms varied, some stated there would be 699 while others claimed 640. While some additional job filings state 699 rooms, the new building plans themselves from May 9, 2008, list 708 rooms.

The plans were approved the following year, on October 9, 2009, and in 2010 reports stated the development was scheduled to open in 2012. However, to this day no permits have been issued to begin construction on the project, although the plans have not been withdrawn.

On September 27, 2016, Toyoko Inn again filed plans, this time using the address 24-09 Jackson Avenue, which is on the same tax block and lot as 24-19 Jackson Avenue. The plans, filed by Takao Endo of Toyoko Inn Co., called for a 50-story, 514-foot, 260,857-square-foot hotel with an eye-popping 1,260 rooms. The new development, calling for a hotel more than 75,000 square feet larger than the 2008 plans, would have 54 rooms per floor on floors two through eight, 22 rooms per floor on floors 10 through 17, 21 rooms per floor on floors 18 through 27, 22 rooms per floor on floors 29 through 36, 21 rooms per floor on floors 37 through 46, and 22 rooms per floor on floors 48 through 50.

At the time of the filing, the proposed hotel would have been the ninth largest hotel in terms of number of rooms in the entire city. It would be easily the largest in the outer boroughs and the only hotel outside of Manhattan in the top 10.

The plans, however, were disapproved on March 27, 2017, and no permits have been issued. The most recent activity appears to be related to an A3 filing from July 27, 2016, calling for a fence to be set up around the site. On August 1, 2019, a permit was issued for the fence, the fourth of its kind.

Chicago-based Hotel Architect DPC is the architect listed on the 2016 filing. Richard Kalb of Hotel Architect DPC told PincusCo Media that the project is currently “on indeterminate hold.”

Toyoko Inn’s other delayed U.S. hotel, a 24-story, 615-room development in Chicago has been struggling to get off the ground for years. The company had also been attempting to construct an 861-room hotel in Atlanta, Georgia but in 2011 it was reported the parcel had been put up for sale.

The second largest delayed hotel development in Queens was pre-filed by Chris Jiashu Xu of United Construction & Development Group on July 15, 2008. The plans called for a 255,245-square-foot, 144-foot tall hotel, at 41-19 21st Street in Queens.

The Schedule A attached to the plans states there would be rooms on floors 3 through 14 of the proposed 14-story hotel, however the number is not specified.

The plans was disapproved on January 13, 2009 and no permits have been issued. The job is currently on hold, and a three-year-old partial stop work order exists on the property. The only plans filed since the new building plans were an A3 plan to install a temporary fence pre-filed on November 13, 2009, and a tax lot subdivision (SI) to split tax lot 12 into tax lots 12 and 18 pre-filed on August 18, 2015. The A3 job was permitted and completed and the SI was approved and marked completed the same day the application was filed.

A representative of United Construction & Development Group stated that the property was still vacant but that there was hope to move forward with the development in the future.

The third largest delayed hotel development in Queens was pre-filed by Beijing-based developer Yihai Group on August 7, 2018. The plans call for a 204,123-square-foot hotel and residential building at 133-25 37th Avenue in Flushing, Queens.

The proposed development would have 101,513-square-feet of commercial space, 2,267-square-feet of community facility space, and 100,343-square-feet of residential space. In total, the building would have 506-units, 360 of which would be hotel rooms and 146 of which would be apartments. The hotel rooms would take up floors two through seven, while the apartments would span floors 8 through 19 of the 19-story building.

The development, which reports stated would be called “Yihai Garden” would occupy property that Yihai Group purchased for $28.9 million in 2013.

The plans were ultimately disapproved on May 23, 2019, and no permits were ever issued. Shortly after, the developer chose to sell the property to Gary Tsan and Jianfei Chen for $58.5 million. The deal, which closed on February 20, 2020, and was recorded on March 4, 2020, also included 133-24 36th Road and 133-28 36th Road.

In the five plus months since the sale took place, Yihai Group’s 2018 plans have remained active. It is unclear whether or not the new developers plan to attempt to move forward with the project or if they will go in a different direction. The developers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

These three developments, along with the six other permit-less Queens hotel plans of 50,000 square feet or more pre-filed in 2018 or earlier can be seen in the table below. Both Toyoko Inn projects are included in the table.

It is important to note that after Jacob Elberg sold the 25-10 42nd Road property for $12.5 million in 2016, new building plans were filed in January of 2019. However, those plans were later withdrawn, leaving Elberg’s original filing as the only active plans for the property, hence its inclusion in the table.