Architect Gene Kaufman is designing McSam Hotel Group’s 350 W 40th and 326 W 37th—both expected to break ground next quarter and fly national-brand flags. Here’s what to expect from the newest hotels on Manhattan’s West Side.
1) Privacy and activity in one
On Friday, we snapped Gene with a few of his models in his 525 Broadway office, where he told us tourists and weekend guests want to be part of the bustling Times Square. Privacy isn’t achievable in such a dense area, though a sense of privacy is, he says. So the 600-key 350 W 40th (on the site of an old parking garage between Eighth and Ninth) will have a 90-foot-tall lattice (a grid that mimics Manhattan’s streets) grown over with ivy, which still lets guests steal glimpses of the buzzing neighborhood outside.
2) New destinations
326 W 37th (also between Eighth and Ninth) is two doors west of a Homewood Suites that Gene designed and that will open in April, and a Courtyard by Marriott just opened across the street. He says the Garment District, like Chelsea a few years ago, had been neglected for a while and now is finding higher and better uses (like a pair of old slacks turned into drapes). North, on 39th, where once there was no reason to walk the block, he’s opened a Candlewood Suites, Holiday Inn Express, and Hampton Inn all side by side (which we snapped this afternoon), and SoHo chocolatier Kee’s has opened a second location (guess what Gene’s wife got for Valentine’s Day).
3) Contributing to the neighborhood
In the next wave of projects, Gene’s looking for ways to replace the retail, restaurants, and parking that redevelopment has taken from the area. At McSam’s L-shaped Holiday Inn at 585 Eighth Ave (which we snapped today), for instance, a plaza will go in along the avenue, and a restaurant (independent from the hotel) that’s larger than the 288 rooms call for will go in on the street.
Here’s Gene’s most expensive hotel: A duplicate of this one-quarter SF birdhouse, designed on behalf of Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates (he’s also a principal in that firm), sold at a recent charity fundraiser for $4,000, or $16k/SF. Gene’s first hotel, in 1997, was the second for McSam chairman Sam Chang. Gene was close to finalizing a residential design for a project near South Street Seaport when the developer sold the 320 Pearl St site to Sam. The seller told Gene he was doing Gene a favor, because McSam would become his biggest client. He turned out to be right; Gene has designed more than 50 hotels for Sam, and his firm does one or two hotels a month.
