Hyatt To Open Two New Manhattan Hotels

The Hyatt hotel brand, which has been underrepresented in Manhattan with only one location, is setting out to remedy that situation. After nearly 30 years of having just one Manhattan hotel—the 1,311 room Grand Hyatt next to Grand Central Terminal—the company will open two properties there in the next year.

According to Crain’s New York, the Chicago-based company is opening a property on 41st Street and Fifth Avenue across from Bryant Park early next year, and is close to completing a second hotel at the corner of Wall Street and Water Street in the downtown financial district. That one is slated to open in September. Both will bear the new Hyatt brand, Andaz, which the company bills as a boutique lifestyle property.

“Hyatt has a great global brand which is dramatically underutilized in New York,” Mark Gordon, head of the U.S. Hotel Group of Cushman & Wakefield, Sonnenblick Goldman, told Crain’s New York.

“We are bullish on New York,” he added. “I don’t think [the economy] will dramatically get worse from where we are now. I don’t see a further significant downturn.”

Separately, in July the flagship Grand Hyatt is launching a $12 million renovation of its 18,000-square-foot ballroom.