The owner of The Blue Moon Hotel, a 22-key boutique spot located on 100 Orchard Street, has dropped the asking price from nearly $30 million to $19.5 million, The Commercial Observer has learned.
Owner Robert Settenbrino spent five years restoring the Blue Moon Hotel’s classic touches, such as cast-iron stoves from the 19th century and advertisements from the 1920s. After the hotel was on the market for a year, Mr. Settenbrino has tapped an Eastern Consolidated team of Adelaide Polsinelli and Scott Ellard to handle the hotel’s sale.
“The asking price has been reduced, the market has gotten better, and the Eastern Consolidated platform is much more suitable for this type of sale,” said Ms. Polsinelli, who previously handled this listing when she was a broker at Marcus & Millichap.
A variety of “institutional users” have looked at the property, said Ms. Polsinelli, along with different types of firms in the hospitality and entertainment industries.
Ms. Polsinelli believes the best use for the hotel would be a transformation into a lounge or bar.
“As a hotel it really needs to go to the next step,” she said. “The lounge [of the hotel], that should be income-producing. It should be a restaurant, a bar, an area that makes money rather than be an amenity,” she added.
Mr. Settenbrino did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
The hotel features rooms with high ceilings, sizes that range from 320 to 750 square feet, and feature Juliet balconies that overlook the Lower East Side.
The hotel also offers the possibility to transform its roof into a rooftop bar.
“The hotel was built with loving care, but today the market for the hospitality industry has changed. It is not about a pretty, big room,” said Ms. Polsinelli, “it’s about how much fun can I have in this building and how many options do I have?”
drosen@observer.com
