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The Firmdale hotel on Warren is moving along
The Firmdale hotel planned for 86 Warren has picked up steam — they are already seven stories above ground after nearly a year and a half of working on the foundation (they broke ground in February 2020) plus dealing with covid delays.
The hotel, which will rise to 11 stories aka 135 feet eventually, is scheduled to have 44,000 square feet of hotel space and 11,000 of residential. The construction schedule now has them adding about a floor a week.
I haven’t been able to snag any more current renderings other than this one from 2020, which oddly makes it look like a flat plane. But will keep trying. The drawing below is from the filings at the DOB and the image below is the Crosby Hotel entrance, just for a reference.
Firmdale is Kit and Tim Kemp — a husband and wife team who built their first boutique hotel, the Dorset Square, in London in 1985 and have gone on to open seven others in the UK (Kit is the creative director and an interior designer with gobs of accolades, and Tim is the numbers guy). They opened the Crosby Street Hotel here in 2010, and the Whitby in 2017. The architect for Warren Street (will it be the Warren Street Hotel??) is Paul Taylor of Stonehill Taylor, who also did the Crosby and the Whitby, and I assume Kit Kemp will be doing the interiors.
There’s bound to be a restaurant or even two inside this one — the Crosby and the Whitby each have their own bar/restaurant. (A friend of mine from Texas makes it a habit to have tea at the Whitby whenever she’s in town.) There is definitely a terrace in the back on the second floor.
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As long as they don’t convert that hotel into a homeless shelter if it doesn’t work out.
Will say it again as someone who backs up to this construction, Firmdale thus far has been a terrible neighbor, with construction happening sometimes through the night. The hammering, air horns and yelling begins at 7 AM (though air horns did subside a slight bit for a several weeks.)
There is no reason that a private development needs weekend and evening hours for construction. This is NOT a public service emergency project. Many of us are working from home. Those of us that are back in offices have schedules we need to keep. The blatant disregard for the immediate neighbors is not a good way to come to the neighborhood.
Continue to contact 311 with noise complaints. It’s the only way that those of us on the block bound by Greenwich, Warren, Chambers and West Broadway will be able to get some sleep!
I hope this lack of regard for the immediate neighbors is not a foreshadowing of what is to be expected from Firmdale once they take occupancy, but I won’t hold my breath.
If you have any doubt about how this will impact the neighbors once the hotel takes occupancy, consider this quote “There is definitely a terrace in the back on the second floor.” There will be people drinking and smoking out there, and private events happening evenings and weekends also.
61 complaints so far. Many about after-hours construction. DOB inspectors seem to show up conveniently when the crew isn’t working. Today, 12/18/2021, the construction started at about 9:30 am. DOB’s real-time AHV map shows that this site’s AHV expired two days ago. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/html/active-after-hour-variance.html
Idling is a major problem at this site too. I get that the cement trucks and some mechanically necessary motors need to run but there are plenty of other trucks (including personal vehicles for the construction crew) that arrive early and then sit for hours – right across the street from a preschool.