NYC: A Landmark Reinvented

Our NYC reporter recently visited GFI Capital Resources prez and GB Lodging co-founder Allen Gross, owner of 5 Beekman St, which has been boarded up for 20 years. The 130-year-old, Landmarked property is undergoing a $350M reinvention, including a 200k SF new tower, Allen tells us. (Hopefully he's called the Ghostbusters... just to be safe.) It'll deliver in July 2015 with 287 hotel rooms spread across the existing 150k SF Temple Court building and the first 19 floors of the new tower. Condos will start on the 20th floor of the new building. The project also will include 6,000 SF of indoor and outdoor event space and the kind of major-league restaurants that make for good client dinners. There isn't much in either of those categories in Downtown Manhattan, Allen says.

We can't show you the new look yet (Allen's a man of mystery until the property is ready), but we snapped the scaffolding surrounding the massive reconstruction. He tells us the hotel's design will be timeless, as if it's been a hotel since its delivery in 1881 (it was built as an imitation of London's old boys clubs). Along with the Four Seasons that broke ground this week a block away, it'll capitalize on weekend guests; 15 million annual visitors are projected Downtown, drawn in not just by the perennial Wall Street bull and the Statue of Liberty but by the WTC, 9/11 Museum, South Street Seaport, and the birth of Downtown retail.

The project is a career definer, Allen says, as he's been working Downtown since 1991 and has watched its transformation. So no wonder he got three paintings of 5 Beekman St for his birthday. His kids commissioned the painting behind him in the photo we snapped in his office at top. It's the view from the atrium, which had been boxed off for 45 years and offers skyward views of the Woolworth Building, Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce St, and 1 WTC. Meanwhile, the Ace Hotel GM and his wife commissioned the above painting. And while the artist was outside working on it, GFI hotel development head Eric Bass passed by and liked it so much he pre-ordered a lithograph, which hangs at Allen's home. All he was missing, Allen says, was a birthday cake in the shape of the building.