Ground broken on Yonkers hotel - Westfair Communications

Backhoes stripped the surface of a fenced-off parking area in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers as city officials joined mall owners and private partners at a groundbreaking ceremony last week for Hyatt Place Yonkers, a 155-room hotel expected to open in 2015 in an eight-story tower formerly used as a hospital and office building.

Construction on the approximately $25 million, 75,000-square-foot project has begun as Cross County”™s owner, Brooks Shopping Centers L.L.C., prepares to celebrate this year the 60th anniversary of the fully renovated Yonkers landmark, one of the first outdoor shopping centers to open in the U.S.

“This has been a long time coming,” said James Stifel, executive vice president of Brooks Shopping Centers, owner of the Cross County property since 1977.

Co-developer James Friend outside the Cross County Shopping Center tower being retrofitted as a 155-room hotel.

The hotel”™s co-developers called the project “complicated,” as workers will retrofit the existing tower ”“ the former Cross County Hospital ”“ while ground-floor retail tenants stay open for business during the 18-month construction period. An approximately 11,000-square-foot gatehouse will be built at the front of the tower to accommodate the hotel”™s public spaces and ground-floor shops. And that work will go on “in the middle of a 1 million square-foot shopping center,” said James Friend, president and CEO of Friend Development Group L.L.C. in Manhattan.

The hotel”™s original developer, Friend has been joined in the development by Yonkers LW Hotel Associates L.P., an affiliate of LodgeWorks Partners L.P., a hotel development and management company headquartered in Wichita, Kan. LodgeWorks Partners also will manage the hotel for Hyatt Hotels Corp. Launched in 2006, the Hyatt Place brand now includes 195 hotels worldwide.

“LodgeWorks has been a partner of mine and close business associate for almost 20 years,” Friend said. Friend”™s company and LodgeWorks also are co-developing a new Hampton Inn hotel in Brooklyn this year.

“They were sort of a perfect complement for what I needed to make this project a reality,” Friend said. “I bought the vision and I had to sell them on the vision. They bought into it.”

“This is really a labor of love,” Friend said. “Everyone who looked at this project before me walked away. They said it couldn”™t be done.”

Mike Daood, president of LodgeWorks Partners, said his email exchanges with Friend about the Yonkers development began in 2008. The challenge for the developers and Cross County”™s owner and management company, Macerich, was “how to make an old building a brand new hotel,” he said.

“It”™s really tough to do this stuff,” Daood said. “We”™re excited. We”™re happy to see backhoes working in the background” at the ceremony.

The hotel was designed by Stonehill & Taylor Architects P.C. in Manhattan. The project”™s general contractor is GTL Construction L.L.C in White Plains.

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano noted that businesses do very well along the Interstate 87 corridor in Yonkers, where Cross County Shopping center is located, and cited Westchester”™s Ridge Hill shopping center and the high numbers of visitors to Yonkers Raceway. “We know that having a hotel here is going to help in the larger scheme as well,” he said.

“Obviously this hotel is essential to keeping up the momentum” of the city”™s ongoing revitalization, Spano said.