A new hotel — with a large Chinese grocery on the ground floor — is scheduled to debut any day now on the border of Chinatown and the Lower East Side.
Landing in our in-box this morning was a press release from Marriott announcing the opening of the Fairfield Inn & Suites at 95 Henry St. (at Pike Street). The 95 room hotel will “operate as a Marriott franchise, owned by United Construction and Development Corporation and managed by Urgo Hotels and Resorts.” Rates will start, the release stated, at $195/night. The property is being marketed as both a hotel for business travelers as well as budget-minded tourists.
While it is not mentioned in the press release, a large “Chinatown Supermarket” consumes much of the ground floor at 95 Henry. It also looks to be almost ready for customers. A devastating fire destroyed the Hong Kong Supermarket on this same site in 2009. A couple of years ago, Singtao Daily, the Chinese language newspaper, reported that Flushing-based developer Chris Jia Shu Xu was building the hotel as a Marriott. As we indicated last spring, Xu asked Community Board 3 to support a liquor license (wine only) for a restaurant within the hotel. The application is listed as “pending” in the State Liquor Authority’s database.
There’s a Howard Johnson hotel less than two blocks away from the new Fairfield. A search of Expedia for November 1 check-in shows rooms at the hotel starting a $339/night, compared with $316 for the Howard Johnson’s (creatively identified as a “Soho hotel.”)
You can see more details about the property, including room photos, on Marriott’s web site.
What happened to the swimming pool? I was always a little dubious about them squeezing a pool in there, but there no longer seems to be any reference to it in their materials.