A campaign to turn troubled hotels into affordable apartments is at last progressing.
One struggling Hilton near JFK Airport in Queens has been identified as the guinea pig for the program.
On Wednesday, developers announced that a 2021 state tourism program aimed at easing the process of converting hotels into housing would finally be utilized, the New York Times first reported.
Jamaica Queens’ Hilton New York JFK Airport, at 144-02 135th Ave., has been selected as the first hard-times hotel to be transformed from short- to long-term residential.
Once complete, the $150 million redevelopment is slated to feature 300 units, according to the Times.
Advocates of the pandemic-era program argue that this method of turning existing inns into apartments will prove more efficient than building new housing.
“We have to add more units than we’ve ever done,” commented David Schwartz of Slate Property Group, one of the developers set to be involved in the conversion, according to the Times. “We have to make the pie bigger.”
The nonprofit Riseboro Community Partnership and MSquared are also on the project’s development team.
Gov. Kathy Hochul called the announcement an “important step” for meeting the needs of New Yorkers who are “counting on their elected officials to do something about the housing crisis.”
Between renovating the hotel rooms and adding heating systems, developers anticipate the Hilton’s former rooms being rentable as permanent housing within two years.
The 207,000-square-foot Hilton in question, one of two by the international airport, is being sold by the hotel developer Sam Chang after a dive in foreign tourism hurt business beyond repair, Crain’s reported.
According to a layoff notice posted on the state Labor Department’s website in March, the 12-story business is set to lay off all 125 of its workers and permanently close on June 1.