Extell plans new hotel at shuttered Wellington

Garry Barnett’s Extell Development is planning a hotel at the site of the Wellington, a century-old building near Billionaire’s Row that provided rooms to the homeless during the DeBlasio administration.

Plans made public on Monday by the Department of Buildings suggest the developer will renovate the hotel rather than construct another towering edifice near Central Park South, like the developer’s Central Park Tower or One57 — both condominium buildings.

The proposed hotel, with 214,000 square feet of floor area across 27 stories, closely matches the existing structure and comes as the city’s permitting guidelines for new hotels has throttled supply.

The hotel will include ground-floor retail and business amenities such as a banquet room, commercial kitchen and a lecture hall. Floors 8 to 27 will be used exclusively as a hotel.

Months after Extell agreed to buy the property’s leasehold for $94 million, fee owner Richard Born’s BD Hotels received approval from the city to renovate the building’s first 12 stories, including demolishing at least half of the building’s floor area.

The city’s permit requirement would kick in for a renovation if its floor area is increased by 20 percent or more, or if the hotel had been out of use for two consecutive years. The Wellington closed about a year into the pandemic, following a stint as a homeless shelter in 2018.

The hotel, known by travelers for its moderate prices and 600 tiny guest rooms, provided lodging to travelers in Midtown. It is unclear how many rooms the new hotel will offer.

Barnett declined to comment and BD did not immediately return a request for comment. 

In 2021, Extell received permits to build a 51-story hotel with 1,350 keys on Eighth Avenue between 45th and 46th Streets, but the project was grandfathered out of the new permitting scheme that requires hotel developments to win approval through the city’s lengthy rezoning process.