Roxy Hotel Owners Reportedly Giving Up Their Pandemic-Fueled Struggle

The Roxy Tribeca, at the intersection of Church Street, White Street and Sixth Avenue, opened in 2000 as the Tribeca Grand. The name was changed in 2015 to match some retro-inspired flourishes to the interior. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

UPDATE: 5/1/21: In a statement to the Trib today, Natalie Manion, director of marketing for GrandLife Hotels, the owners of the Roxy and Tribeca Grand, called “untrue” The Real Deal article referenced in this story. “GrandLife Hotels…remains committed to operating these iconic New York Hotels. GrandLife Hotels has remained current on all of its financial obligations throughout the pandemic,” she wrote. Django, the hotel’s jazz club, is expected to open in April and The Roxy Cinema is anticipated to begin screening movies again in May, she said. “The Hotels are well positioned for the future, and we look forward to continuing to offer unique hospitality experiences to our guests and locals,” Manion said.

The pandemic’s devastating hit to the city’s tourist industry has now claimed Tribeca’s Roxy Hotel, according to The Real Deal [1]. 

Hartz Mountain Industries is returning both its Roxy and Tribeca Grand hotels to its lender, The Real Deal reports. The company, it says “has requested to transfer the hotels to the special servicer on the $110 million loan via a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, according to a watchlist note from January.”

A person at Hartz Mountain Industries referred questions to GrandLife Hotels, operator of both hotels. The company’s vice president, Ellis Yee, declined to comment.

The company, owned by billionaire Leonard Stern, opened its 201-room hotel as the Tribeca Grand in 2000, four years after completing the larger Soho Grand on West Broadway. The Real Deal notes that Hartz Mountain reportedly “hasn’t missed a payment on [its] interest-only loan” but “no longer wants to fund its losses.”

In its lower level, the hotel operated the 118-seat Roxy Cinema, which specializes in rarely screened movies, independent films and cult classics, and The Django, a jazz club. 

After 9/11, the hotel, then called the Tribeca Grand, housed hundreds Lower Manhattan residents who had been forced from their homes. It charged $99 a night for rooms that normally went for $350 and up, and entertained the displaced with movies in its screening room, with Saturday matinees for children. “So many displaced residents moved to the Tribeca Grand Hotel,” the Trib reported at the time, “that the dimly lit lobby took on the look of a chic refugee camp.” On subsequent 9/11 anniversaries, some of those residents returned to the hotel for reunions and a show of appreciation. 

Since the pandemic began, hotel closings in Lower Manhattan have included AKA Wall Street and the W New York Downtown.