Luxury Hotel Joins New Rochelle’s Renewal

TRYP Hotel by Wyndham. Image courtesy of Gregory Sharp Architects

One of the main gateways to the city of New Rochelle, N.Y., will be the site of a 24-story, 225-key luxury hotel and event center that will be the largest hotel constructed in Westchester County, N.Y., in the last 20 years. Gregory Sharp Architect PC is the architecture firm for the project. Ward Capital Management LLC will develop the $64 million TRYP Hotel by Wyndham, with construction scheduled to begin in the fall and be completed by spring 2021. 

Located about 25 miles north of New York City and directly off Interstate 95 at Cedar Street in downtown New Rochelle, the 245,000-square-foot hotel will have 35,000 square feet of meeting and event space, including the 24th-floor outdoor hydro pool rooftop floor area that can also be used to host events, according to D’Wayne Prieto, managing principal of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.-based Ward Capital Management. The hotel will also include a restaurant and bar, spa facilities, conference space and ballroom, and a 433-car valet parking structure.

READ ALSO: Short-Term Rentals Costing States Millions: Report

The development will preserve and reuse the historic white-brick building located at the project’s base. Constructed in 1905, the building was originally used for industrial purposes and later housed the Don Coqui restaurant. It will become the hotel’s grand lobby and entrance.

“We wanted to keep an element of familiarity. The existing building was built before the Thruway (I-95) and was always a destination location. Many pleasant memories were created and celebrated there. That’s why we are keeping the restaurant where it is and simply restoring it,” Prieto told Commercial Property Executive.

The developers are also planning extensive off-site improvements to the surrounding neighborhood, including a complete redesign and replanting of the islands surrounded by the highway and a new pedestrian passageway that will extend through to the downtown. As part of the passageway, the Metro-North Commuter Railroad underpass will be transformed with new art and lighting.

Approved by the City Planning Board last week, the hotel is part of the city’s larger downtown revitalization plan. In 2015, the city signed a Master Developer agreement with RXR Realty that will allow more than 12 million square feet of new construction, including up to 2.4 million square feet of office space, 1 million square feet of retail, 6,370 housing units and 1,200 hotel rooms. To date, 29 projects—totaling 6 million square feet of space and more than 4,000 housing units—have been approved and 11 are under construction.

While New Rochelle would be the first site for a TRYP by Wyndham in the Hudson Valley, the brand has more than 100 hotels in global destinations including Abu Dhabi, Paris, Sao Paulo and Brisbane, Australia. Last month, TRYP by Wyndham Pittsburgh/Lawrenceville, a 108-key hotel developed by The Century Group, opened in Pennsylvania. The brand, designed to offer guests authentic experiences in up-and-coming destinations, now has 10 locations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The Pittsburgh location is situated in the city’s former Washington Education Center, a vocational trade school that operated in what is now the trendy Lawrenceville neighborhood.