As Tribeca Hotel Seeks Expansion, Neighbors Cry Foul
Community Board 1 is siding with local residents who feel aggrieved by their treatment at the hands of a Tribeca hotel operator.
The owners of the Warren Street Hotel (at 86 Warren) are claiming hardship because they could not excavate as deeply as they planned, “so they are asking to add an additional floor, a 12th floor to the building,” explained Neda Pourshakouri, chair of Community Board 1’s Land Use Committee at the Board’s monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, March 24.
That original basement excavation several years ago, however, damaged the adjacent residential building at 80 Warren Street. A December 8 letter to CB1 from the board at 80 Warren enumerated the problems. “During construction of the Warren Street Hotel, our building was damaged due to the shifting and sinking of our west wall by over one-fourth of an inch,” residents wrote. “As a result of the sinking of our building, many apartments and most of the common spaces on the west side of the building have cracks in walls and ceilings that have not been repaired to this day.”
“While installing the ties to prevent the further sinking of our building in May 2021,” the letter continues, “contractors for the Warren Street Hotel mistakenly drilled holes into the living spaces of apartments on the west side of our building nine different times. The Warren Street Hotel then repaired the holes and some of the damage caused by their construction, but not all. They promised to repair the remaining [damage] when construction was complete, since according to their and our engineers, there was a chance that our building might still shift and cause further damage. These additional repairs never happened, and the hotel has refused to speak with us despite our attempts to discuss the matter many, many times. No repairs have been made since 2021.”
The 80 Warren Street board also alleges that flooding and roof damage were caused by contractors working for the Warren Street Hotel. Referred by hotel management to its insurance company, the letter from the residents says, “their insurance company has not paid for damages to our building that we estimate to be in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars. When we contacted the insurance broker, they said we had to initiate legal action to get our building fixed.”
They conclude by noting, “80 Warren Street is one of the oldest coops in Tribeca, incorporated in 1980. Many of our residents are original owners and four of our residents are in their nineties, living on fixed incomes. If we as a coop are forced to make the repairs and pay for them ourselves, this financial burden will fall on all residents through an assessment. Meanwhile the hotel is charging thousands of dollars per night.”
Firmdale, the owner of the Warren Street Hotel, argues in filings with City regulators that it is losing money (despite rooms that start at $1,165 per night), but that adding 2,921 square feet of space in a new 12th floor will boost the property’s value by $31 million (or more than 50 percent over its current worth). These calculations are rooted in the claim that the Warren Street Hotel, based on its current income stream, is worth $59.5 million (a figure derived using a real estate metric called the “cap rate), which is significantly less than the $86.8 million invested in developing it.
Firmdale claims that the increased income generated by the space on an additional floor would boost overall revenue enough to raise the Warren Street Hotel’s value to $90.7 million. The construction cost of the additional floor is estimated at $2.9 million.
The City’s Department of Buildings (DOB) has already ruled against Firmdale’s request, a decision that the company plans to appeal before the only agency with the authority to overrule the DOB – the City’s Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA). That panel is scheduled to consider this matter on April 13. Prior to making this decision, they required an advisory opinion from CB1.
At last night’s CB1 meeting, Ms. Pourshakouri presented a resolution on the matter to the full board, noting, “the applicant returned in March 2026 but none of the issues have been resolved, and the Committee determined that it cannot support additional zoning relief and construction while these issues remain unresolved.” Recommending disapproval to the BSA, the resolution was enacted unanimously by CB1.