For two decades New Haven was essentially a one-hotel town. Soon, the city center may house an embarrassment of lodging riches. During 2019 two upscale hotels opened in downtown New Haven — one new construction and the other a renovation of a historical Chapel Street hostelry. Over the same 12 months ground was broken on a […]
For two decades New Haven was essentially a one-hotel town. Soon, the city center may house an embarrassment of lodging riches.
During 2019 two upscale hotels opened in downtown New Haven — one new construction and the other a renovation of a historical Chapel Street hostelry. Over the same 12 months ground was broken on a third, while a fourth project was green-lighted for Rt. 34. Finally, an existing George Street hotel was sold to an owner that plans to reposition it for the Yale market.
Last January, the 108-room, luxury extended-stay Blake Hotel opened at High and George streets downtown, the vision of developer Randy Salvatore of the Stamford-based RMS Companies.
In late October longtime Chapel Street SRO fixture the Duncan Hotel was reborn as “Graduate New Haven” — an upscale, college-themed 72-room boutique hotel developed by Chicago-based AJ Capital Partners.
In early December a Maryland hotel chain, Choice Hotels International, paid $2.8 million for a 0.78-acre parcel at 480 Martin Luther King Boulevard — the so-called “Route 34 West” superblock. Earlier in the fall the City Plan Commission approved the company’s application to build a six-story, 130-room hotel on the site to be operated by Choice subsidiary Cambria Hotels.
Also in early December, demolition began on the 1948 former Webster Bank building at 80 Elm Street. Norwalk’s Spinnaker Real Estate Partners plans to build a six-story Hilton Garden Inn on the site.
And last month, it was announced that the Noble Investment Group had acquired the 135-room New Haven Hotel at 229 George Street from a subsidiary of the Newport Hotel Group.
Also, a deal is said to be in the works to redevelop the long-fallow Pirelli headquarters building on Long Wharf into an upscale hotel.
According to city Deputy Business Development Director Steve Fontana, the surge in activity is in part due to “pent-up demand” for both hotel rooms and rental residential units in the city center. That demand is a function in part of expansion at both Yale University, which has added two undergraduate residential colleges, and Yale New Haven Hospital, which has announced plans to build a major neuroscience center on the St. Raphael campus.
“There are more people coming to New Haven” than before, Fontana says, “and they need a place to stay.”