Slate Pays Sam Chang $95M For FiDi Hotel

Slate Property Group bought a Radisson hotel in the Financial District this month — an atypical play for the multifamily firm that may point to eventual conversion plans.

Slate, headed by David Schwartz and Martin Nussbaum, paid $95 million for the 20-story, 289-key hotel at 52 William Street that seller and hotel developer Sam Chang picked up for $94 million in 2017, PincusCo reported.

Neither Slate nor Chang’s McSam Hotel Group responded to requests for comment.

When Chang did the deal, the hotel at 52 William Street was operating under the business-travel brand Club Quarters. Radisson assumed management of the hotel, which is steps from Wall Street, in 2019, according to Business Traveller.

Hospitality isn’t Slate’s typical sandbox. The firm is multifamily-focused; though, it has charted novel paths to rental ownership in recent years.

For example, Slate quietly pieced together a portfolio of homeless shelters — lucrative contracts that guarantee a stream of steady rent — through the early 2020s.

52 William was also a pandemic-era homeless shelter, at one point.

The hotel landed at the center of a citywide fight over where to house homeless people during the pandemic. After Upper West Side residents protested a men’s shelter run out of the Lucerne Hotel on West 79th Street, the city relocated dozens of the Lucerne’s residents to the FiDi Radisson, where it then met resistance from another group of neighbors.

In 2022, the city moved to end its long-term use of the property as a shelter, Gothamist reported. Though, Google reviewers of the Wall Street Radisson claim the hotel is still housing immigrants. It’s unclear if Chang was doing so legally; the hotel does not appear on a city list of shelter buildings.

If Slate taps a shelter strategy, there could be upside for ownership: The city plans to use an additional 14,000 hotel rooms to house migrants through 2025, the New York Post reported.

It’s also possible Slate is eyeing a residential conversion of the property. The firm already has two other projects in the works.

In mid-2023, Slate partnered with RiseBoro Community Partnership to become the first team to pursue a hotel-to-affordable housing conversion under the state’s Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act. The duo picked up the JFK Hilton Hotel near the Queens airport for less than $70 million. McSam Hotel Group was also the seller on that deal. Slate tapped the state program for $48 million to fund the 300-unit, $150 million redevelopment.

A year ago, Slate sunk its teeth into a second conversion, paying $24 million for a shuttered Hampton Inn at 320 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, New York Business Journal reported.

Slate had touted hotels as great options for residential conversions given the quicker turnaround times when compared to ground-up construction, the business journal reported.