Hotel developers have started flocking to the transit-rich and industrially zoned area around Queensboro Plaza, but it looks like the hotel boom has moved north towards the Astoria borderlands. New building applications were filed today for a nine-story hotel at 12-02 37th Avenue in Long Island City, at the edge of the neighborhood’s Industrial Business Zone.
The development would rise 100 feet into the air on a vacant lot between 12th and 13th Streets, in a sleepy commercial no-man’s land near Ravenswood Generating Station and the Roosevelt Island Bridge. It would hold 175 hotel rooms divided across only 50,o00 square feet of commercial space, which works out to average rooms of just 286 square feet.
The ground floor would have 16 rooms, a bar and the lobby, topped by 25 rooms per story on floors two through six, and nine large rooms each on the seventh through ninth floors. There would also be eight rooms, a gym and a lounge in the cellar, along with conference rooms and a breakfast room in the subcellar.
And the development would include 24 off-street parking spots. While YIMBY doesn’t normally support off-street parking, this hotel isn’t particularly close to either of the local subway lines, and tourists would probably drive over the nearby Queensboro or Triboro Bridges to get there.
In fact, it seems like an odd place for a hotel. The surrounding blocks are dotted with low-slung warehouses, two-family homes, and the large Ravenwood Houses public housing project. And the closest subway stop is half a mile away at 21 Street and 41st Avenue, in the middle of Queensbridge Houses.
But the property was relatively cheap, and it’s generously zoned by manufacturing standards. The developer, Jannat Hospitality Group, scooped up the 10,000-square-foot plot in 2005 for $1,345,000, or just $26 per buildable square foot. Shining Tam Architect, based in Borough Park, is the architect of record.
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