The wheels are falling off a hotel-to-apartment conversion in Columbus Circle.
Lender Parkview Financial filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the site of the Hudson Hotel, Crain’s reported. The filing is not expected to affect the residents living at the property, according to Parkview.
The lender made the move to give itself a chance to recapitalize the building. It plans to continue pursuing the conversion of the 24-story building into 400 units of rental housing, though it will need to do so without the project’s developer, CSC Real Estate.
After CSC dodged a foreclosure in April, Parkview sued the co-founders of the firm in July, alleging construction mismanagement. Parkview claimed Alberto and Salomon Smeke Saba failed to address issues with the city that would allow work to move forward on the project.
The Smekes claimed that they had already begun addressing the issues with the relevant city agency, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Later in the month, it shot back at Parkview, alleging the lender didn’t properly fund the project. The suit was discontinued the following month.
It’s unclear why CSC abandoned the project. The firm confirmed its departure to Crain’s, but did not go into detail about why it left Parkview as the lone company guiding the conversion.
Parkview lent $207 million for the purchase and redevelopment of the Hudson Hotel at 353 West 57th Street in May 2022. Construction began soon after, but a little more than a year later, problems arose, such as the fate of the renters in the hotel’s 39 single-room occupancy units.
The hotel dates back to the 1920s when Anne Morgan, daughter of J. P. Morgan, led the development of the historic property. In previous lives, the building provided apartments for single women and served as the headquarters for television station WNET.
It became an 878-room hotel in 2000. It closed its doors in 2020 as a result of the pandemic.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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