More Hotels Are Coming To Midtown, Adding To Supply Crunch

One of the most popular tourist areas in the world will soon be tested to see just how much hotel development it can sustain.

Extell Development has demolished the parking garage at 151-159 West 48th St. as work begins on its 35-story, 445-room Hard Rock Hotel, and Tribeach Holdings has knocked down a parking garage a block south, at 145-155 West 47th St., for a hotel of its own, the New York Post reports.

Initial plans Tribeach filed with the Department of Buildings last year, which have yet to be approved, called for a 27-story hotel, but the Post reports the building will actually rise to 48 stories. Both will sit between Sixth and Seventh avenues, mere blocks away from the center of Times Square and Rockefeller Center, and even closer to a nearly completed, 450-room Edition by Marriott at the corner of Seventh and 47th Street.

On the same block as Extell's Hard Rock Hotel, the Rockefeller Group is also demolishing a parking garage and other vacant buildings, clearing a plot it owns that extends to 47th Street. Although Rockefeller has not disclosed its plans for the site, the bustling tourist area is unlikely to support a mid-block office building, according to the Post.

Before even accounting for Tribeach and Rockefeller's projects, 900 hotel rooms are under construction in a two-block radius, continuing the rush to build hotels that has been ongoing since 2007. In that time, the number of rooms in the city has ballooned from 66,000 to nearly 104,000. There are strong questions about the entire city's ability to fill up the hotel rooms. 

These newest additions will replace parking structures totaling about 1,000 spaces, further testing both Midtown's ability to absorb hotel guests and the spaces in its remaining parking garages.