With all of the new residential and office buildings on the Hudson waterfront, hotels for visitors and business travelers could not have been behind. There are several hotels on the drawing board and in various stages of construction in Jersey City, as well as one in Hoboken. Secaucus has its share of inland hotels and has recently added more. When the Courtyard at Marriott opens in Jersey City within the next month, there will be 23 major hotels in Hudson County and four that are in development or under construction.
The area’s first waterfront hotel was built in 1991 by Hartz Mountain Industries, a Secaucus company that has been a pioneer in developing hotels on the Hudson River waterfront. The hotel started as a 244-room Ramada Inn at the Lincoln Harbor development site in Weehawken near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. The property became a Sheraton Suites hotel in February of 1999 and gained 108 new suites in August of that year.
In Jersey City, the Newport office boom is propelling a demand for new rooms along the waterfront. Until 1998, name-brand hotels were all but unknown in Jersey City. Since its opening in 1998, the 200-room Doubletree Club hotel, a joint project of Hartz Mountain and Garden State Development, has had an occupancy exceeding 80 percent, well ahead of the average for most hotels.
“Jersey City is seeing a hotel boom,” said Dan Frohwirth, the Director of Real Estate for the Jersey City Economic Development Corporation. “The growth has been great. Ten years ago there was nothing, but with the new office towers and assorted development there are more jobs, and that means that there have to be new hotels.”
Another hotel that will open in Jersey City in November is a 189-room Courtyard by Marriott at the Newport PATH station, two blocks north of the Doubletree Club hotel. The Queens-based Lefrak Organization is developing that project. The Courtyard brand, designed to appeal to the business traveler, has grown to more than 400 hotels nationwide.
The new 10-floor hotel will have an 80-seat restaurant, an indoor pool and four conference rooms. The hotel will be the first in the Lefrak Organization’s 600-acre Newport mini-city not far from the Holland Tunnel.
According to a Lefrak spokesman, the entire Newport development will have 1,200 hotel rooms when it is completed over the next decade or so. That will complement the five million square feet of office space and the 9,000 apartments the private developer plans to put on the Newport site.
Candlewood Suites is completing construction and plans to open in January of 2001. Located between the Newport and Exchange Place PATH stations, two blocks southeast of the Doubletree Club, the Candlewood property will be an “extended stay” hotel catering to the needs of the business traveler. With 160 business suites and 54 one-bedroom suites, it is well equipped to serve the transitional needs of people moving into our area.
Hyatt Regency recently started construction on the Exchange Place pier next to the PATH station. This massive 350-room Hyatt is scheduled to open in 2002. According to New Jersey Business Magazine, the nine-story property will include a 165-seat restaurant and a 75-seat bar with views of New York City. The tentative date for the Hyatt’s opening is 2002.
In Hoboken and Secaucus
In Hoboken, a 350-room hotel is planned for the South Waterfront development, along with an office building and 500 residential units. The South Waterfront site is a planned mixed-use development of at least 2.3 million square feet of space on three city blocks located next to the Hoboken Terminal. The developer for this project has not been designated yet, but according to Hoboken Director of Human Services Robert Drasheff, two bids on the project have been made and the city will make a decision in December.
Secaucus has also seen a growth in hotel development. Within the last two years, four new hotels were built, which gives Secaucus 13 hotels in all. Prime Hospitality Corporation, along with Hartz Mountain Industries, built a 159- room AmeriSuites in the mixed-use Harmon Meadow development in 1999. Also constructed in 1999 were the 75-unit Homestead Village and the 176-room Meadowlands Plaza. Opening earlier this year was the 132-room Mainstay Hotel Suites at Harmon Meadow Plaza.
With approximately 3,000 rooms in the county available each night (including three hotels in North Bergen), business or personal travelers have lots of different lodging choices in Hudson County.
“It really is amazing to see what is being built in the area,” said Frohwirth. “With all of the residents and businesses that are moving to the waterfront, the growth of new hotels is not surprising at all.”