Real estate investor Mahesh Ratanji has purchased the Holiday Inn Express in Hell’s Kitchen for $26.5 million. Ratanji, who has several hotels operating as shelters in his portfolio, acquired the property at 538 W48th Street in December, Crain’s reported.
Investor Mahesh Ratanji acquired the Holiday Inn Express at 538 W48th Street for $26.5 million in December. Photo: Brennan LaBrie
It is not Ratanji’s first foray into the neighborhood, however. He purchased the Casamia 36 at 449 W36th Street — a 40-room hotel that serves as a Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelter, operated by a veteran services nonprofit — in January 2025 for $14 million.
Of the five other hotels W42ST could identify in the investor’s NYC portfolio, two in Brooklyn and one in The Bronx operate as DHS facilities for families. The Holiday Inn, however, is not in the DHS shelter pipeline, a spokesperson told W42ST.
Ratanji previously purchased the Casamia 36 Hotel at 449 W36th Street in January 2025 for $14 million. Photo: Catie Savage
If Ratanji continues hotel operations at the 177-room Holiday Inn Express, his purchase would reflect the city’s resurgent hotel industry as tourism rebounds from the pandemic. And in no residential neighborhood was the hotel industry hit harder than Hell’s Kitchen.
Early in the pandemic, hotels across the area were transformed into homeless shelters, and many shifted to housing migrants when arrivals of asylum seekers peaked in 2022 and 2023. As new arrivals declined in 2024, the city converted many of these facilities – like the Washington Jefferson, Skyline and Watson – back into homeless shelters.
The Washington Jefferson on W51st Street and the Skyline Hotel on 10th Avenue continue to operate as DHS shelters. Photos: Phil O’Brien and Catie Savage
Seven former hotels continue to serve as shelters in the neighborhood, including the Casamia 36, while the 23-room Hotel Merit re-opened to tourists in 2024. The 602-room Watson, whose migrant shelter closed last June, is slated to reopen as a 249-unit apartment building. The Row Hotel, the biggest hotel migrant shelter in the city at 1,331 rooms, began removing tenants in November and is currently undergoing a mass clean-out.
However, new supportive housing facilities are still being introduced in former Hell’s Kitchen hotels. Last September, NYC Health + Hospitals opened a transitional housing facility for people with mental health issues in the building formerly occupied by the Hudson River Hotel on W36th Street.
Social service provider Breaking Ground and Slate Property Group purchased the Stewart Hotel at 371 7th Avenue near Penn Station for $255 million, with plans to convert the 31-story building into housing for low-income and formerly homeless individuals. This follows a model Breaking Ground used in 1991 when it purchased the Times Square Hotel and converted it into the largest permanent supportive housing residence in the nation.