The Hotel Bossert is becoming a condo with 60 to 70 large and luxurious apartments.
Photo: Google Maps
When the Hotel Bossert opened in 1909, it was one of the most luxurious places to stay in all of Brooklyn, before it lost its luster in the years after World War II. In the 1960s, it became an S.R.O. for respectable types and subsequently, dorm-like accommodations for visiting Jehovah’s Witnesses, a well-maintained place if not exactly glamorous. Now, the Brooklyn Heights hotel is returning to its (very) upscale roots, with a condo conversion that its new owner, the commercial real estate firm SomeraRoad, told the Brooklyn Heights blog will bring “the most amenitized building that Brooklyn has seen.” It’s a big claim for a borough that has the Olympia Dumbo (bowling alley anyone?) and 11 Hoyt, with its squash court and a 75-foot saltwater pool. But the list does include a 60-foot pool, kids’ play room, pilates studio, and a private dining room.
Brooklyn Heights residents have been eagerly awaiting news of the Hotel Bossert’s conversion since it sold to SomeraRoad for $100 million last spring after 14 years of limbo under developer Joseph Chetrit. Chetrit had planned to turn it back into a luxury hotel but never reopened it and ultimately lost the building to foreclosure. Somera’s founder, Ian Ross, is a Brooklyn Heights resident, and told the blog in a recent video interview that he’s been walking by the property for the last 15 years and trying to figure out how to buy it for the past five.
From the beginning, SomeraRoad has said it intended to convert the building to condos, but didn’t give many details beyond that. Now, Ross, who called Brooklyn Heights “the best neighborhood for families in New York,” says that there will be 60 to 70 apartments, “primarily geared toward three- and four-bedroom users.” He described the hotel conversion as a “phenomenal opportunity to provide that condo product that the market is deeply seeking,” noting that much of the neighborhood is landmarked, preventing ground-up new residential. As a result, there are a lot of very expensive townhouses and some sprawling co-ops, but not many condos — at least, not the type of ultra-luxury condos that have popped up elsewhere in the borough in recent years, with the exception of a handful of new, very fancy options nearby, like Olympia Dumbo.
Besides the fact that the condos at the Bossert will be very large and very luxurious, which is not all that surprising — high-end, family-oriented real estate is having something of a moment in Brooklyn Heights right now — the other news to come out of the interview is that there will be an upscale restaurant in the hotel. (Besides a nail salon and double-filtered drinking water, the Bossert also had a famous double-deck rooftop restaurant when it opened — the Marine Roof — although the upper floors will, most likely, be reserved for condo owners now.) Ross, who described the restaurant as “our gift to the community and the neighborhood” which he called “underserved from a high-quality restaurant perspective,” said the restaurant would be 5,000 square feet, most likely with some outdoor space, and that SomeraRoad was in conversation with “some of the best restaurateurs in the city.”
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