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New York Condotels’ State

In the past three years hundreds of hotel rooms in New York have been converted into condominium apartments, including space at some of the city’s most historic and elegant hotels. The list includes The Plaza, the St. Regis, The Stanhope and the St. Moritz. About 1,200 rooms were converted in 2004 and in 2005, up from about 200 in 2001 and in 2002. This is still part of the series Condo Hotel Buyer Guide: Where the Best Condo Hotels are located.

New York Attractions

Being the Nation’s first landscaped park, Central Park covers 6% of Manhattan and is known to play host to many of the city’s events and activities. The park boasts of the features like Strawberry Fields, an area deducated to the late John Lennon who have been known to take many walks through Central Park where he and his family enjoyed the peaceful tranquility that the park embodies. The park’s zoo and witness exhibits of natural wildlife displaying various species of animals from polar bears to red-bellied piranha is one of the must-see in the park as well that receives over one million visitors a year.

Once you’re in New York City, a street you’ll want to travel on is one that is synonymous with the Theatre Arts: Broadway! Since the late 1800’s, live entertainment has been one of New York City’s staples where theatre goers have enjoyed the likes of Shakespeare, to the more recent musical, Wicked, quoted by Time Magazine as “Best Musical of the Year”.

In 1943, the development of American Opera would find its home in New York’s, City Opera, where American operatic works of the 20th century can be heard by travelers visiting from around the world. Sharing the same theatre, The New York City Ballet is one of the earliest dance companies in the world where dancers are trained by the best ballet masters to produce the finest ballet performances an audience will ever experience.

New York City is also known for having a diverse collection of Museums. One can learn various things about the history of New York and witness a collection of past artifacts from the city’s fire department and police department.

These attractions are the ones responsible why reeled in a total of 44 million number of domestic and international visitors who spend almost $20 billion a year thus boosting New York’s economy even further.

New York Condo Hotels

In New York, the city’s first foray into successful hotel-condos was considered 1998’s Trump International Hotel and Tower at One Central Park West. Also in the Columbus Circle neighborhood is the Mandarin Oriental at the new Time Warner Center, which is considered the most luxurious.

The conversions have been spurred in the city, in part, by intense market demand for luxury real estate, as well as for homes that come with a broad range of hotel-like services, such as housekeeping, room service and someone to park the car. The demand for such hybrid residences has far surpassed the expectations of market analysts and even those of the most optimistic developers.

Last year, The Trump’s Condo Hotel project received a lot of protests from surrounding neighborhoods because of the abuse in a loophole on New York’s zoning law. Right now, Trump SoHo is seen by Mitchell Adelstein, president of CRG Realty Advisors L.L.C., a hotel financing advisory firm, as a property that would open floodgates to condo-hotels that have quality managers and quality operators.

Condo Hotels in New York are not as prevalent just like the state of condo hotels in Chicago unlike in Florida and Las Vegas because while the city’s hotel market has rebounded strongly from its malaise after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, escalating land prices can still mean that developing hotels can still be a challenge.

Likewise, for ordinary travelers, the boom in conversions has meant fewer rooms and higher prices at New York’s classic and better-located hotels. Some much-loved hotels with lots of character and moderate price tags, like the Empire, near Lincoln Center, and the Wyndham, just off Central Park, are closed for condominium conversion and will reopen as apartments next year. The number of New York hotel rooms actually is growing, Hanson said, but that is mostly because of a spurt in the construction of low-budget, limited-service hotels in less desirable locations.