The city is not expected to publicly announce the winning bids for the Seward Park Mixed-Use Development Project until the fall – but the morning there’s another tidbit about one of the proposals for the large residential/retail site near the Williamsburg Bridge.
In a piece on the future of the influential BD Hotel Group, the Wall Street Journal notes that Caroline Born, the 29-year old daughter of company co-founder Richard Born, has been working on:
…a bid for the six-acre Seward Park site on the Lower East Side with Artemis Real Estate Partners. BD Hotels wants to put a hotel with pod-size rooms on the site.
The city’s RFP (request for proposals) for the Seward Park project made allowances for a hotel. It was a part of the plan not enthusiastically embraced by members of Community Board 3, who worked with NYC planners to develop the framework for the site (most locals think the last thing the neighborhood needs is another hotel). But officials with the city’s Economic Development Corp. wanted to give developers the option of building a hotel because, they said, it would be a revenue producing enterprise — offsetting other things the community wanted, including affordable housing.
BD Hotels has created more than two dozen projects in New York City. The company will soon open a new 20-story hotel at 180 Ludlow St. Artemis Real Estate Partners is a Maryland-based firm co-founded by Deborah Harmon and Penny Pritzker. Pritzker was recently confirmed as President Obama’s new commerce secretary.
Follow the money.
So instead of housing for the people displaced we get pods for cheap-ass tourists.