The new owner of a 50-story hotel in New York City's Financial District has turned the building into student housing just months after acquiring it.
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Los Angeles-based real estate firm Hawkins Way Capital paid $155M in July to buy the 485-foot-tall building at 99 Washington St. out of bankruptcy. It opened in 2014 as the world's tallest Holiday Inn before closing during the pandemic and being used as a migrant shelter.
But after the sale this summer, Hawkins Way subsidiary Found Study FiDi enlisted adaptive reuse specialist BDB Construction to convert the 492-key hotel into a 650-bed student dormitory. The first phase of that conversion is now complete, BDB announced Wednesday.
Nearby institutions include Pace University, the New York Film Academy and The King’s College. The building could also pull students from the City University of New York, Baruch College, Hunter College and New York University, BDB CEO Tallal Bhutta told Bisnow by email.
BDB is also converting an adjacent chapel into amenities and has added new finishes, cabinetry and fixtures to all the building’s rooms and common areas.
The rapid pace of construction means that the building’s owners can start moving in students already and generating revenue, Bhutta said in a statement. The firm expects to complete the construction by the start of the fall 2026 semester.
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“Converting the hotel tower at 99 Washington St. into student residences is being completed in two discrete phases, so they achieved occupancy for about half of the 650 planned beds before this fall semester started,” Bhutta said.
While BDB said in its release that the property is now the tallest student housing accommodation in the world, it will likely soon lose that crown. While it is taller than the Guinness World Record holder, the 367-foot Nido Spitalfields in London, a 190-meter (623-foot) dorm, is set to open in Leeds, UK, next year.
The Holiday Inn property was developed by a partnership of Sam Chang and Jubao Xie, then Xie bought out Chang’s stake three years after completion. The developer listed the hotel for $300M but struggled to find a buyer.
Then the pandemic set in, prompting a foreclosure battle that pushed the property into bankruptcy in 2022. A bankruptcy judge approved a contract with the city for the hotel to act as a migrant shelter in 2023, but when its contract wasn’t renewed last year, Xie's affiliate — which had been taken over by Philadelphia-based GF Hotels & Resorts — sold the building to Hawkins Way.
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