BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The Williamsburg Hotel in Brooklyn will soon go by another name—Arlo Williamsburg—HOTELS has learned. The change comes after new owner, New York-based private equity investment and development firm Quadrum Global, plunked down $96 million at auction earlier this year for the beleaguered 147-room hotel at 96 Wythe Avenue in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood.
The hotel officially changes its name in September and joins fellow Arlo hotels in Manhattan, Arlo SoHo, Arlo Midtown and Arlo NoMad. Other Arlo hotels recently opened in Chicago and Florida. Quadrum also has another Arlo hotel under construction in Washington, D.C.
Oleg Pavlov, founder and CEO Quadrum Global, said the new acquisition represented “an interesting new phase” in the short history of Arlo Hotels.
“Up until today, all our Arlos we essentially built ourselves. [They] were conceived as a ground-up greenfield project… there was nothing there before other than raw land,” he said. “We then thought about how we can grow further and whether we were ready to put an Arlo sign on something that wasn’t an Arlo before. The Williamsburg Hotel was very interesting to us because as an asset, it became an iconic part of the Williamsburg hotel scene.”
Pavlov added that the eight-story building fit within what “what an Arlo usually is.”
Jimmy Suh, Arlo’s chief commercial officer, stressed that the aim is to grow the value of Arlo Hotels by having the relatively new brand stand out among what Suh described as the “growing evolution and number of lifestyle brands that are surfacing every year.” The company is focusing on three pillars: community, discovery, approachability. For example, Suh noted, the mission is to embrace the culture a community represents and have it reflected in a property. “Everyone wants that hyperlocal experience when they travel to our hotels,” said Suh, noting the intent is to bring in local partners, artists, etc.
Quadrum also will be putting some CapEx spend in the property, particularly around its F&B spaces.
ASSET TROUBLE
The Williamsburg Hotel originally opened in 2017 but soon became ensnarled in fraud allegations by its lender Benefit Street Partners against owner Toby Moskovits and her development firm, Heritage Equity Partners.
Benefit Street alleged that Moskovits and partner Michael Lichtenstein had siphoned money out of the hotel. Both Moskovits Lichtenstein denied the allegation, but Heritage subsequently faced lawsuits and a foreclosure attempt by Benefit Street. The hotel soon foundered into bankruptcy and was put into bankruptcy in 2021. A bankruptcy trustee selected Quadrum as the buyer in January.
“It was a highly sought-after asset,” said Pavlov, noting the executors of the sales process said they received requests for information on the property from across the globe. “It was a tricky, complicated transaction. We thought we were well positioned to acquire the asset.”
“Typically, a bankruptcy is quite messy,” said Amir Setayesh, global managing director of Quadrum Global. “Contracts, vendors, even unknowns with the staff, not knowing what’s going to happen. With our beliefs and values, we were able to come in and stabilize things” for staff and the community.
In the end, said Pavlov, a lot of investors were deterred by the complexity of the deal, so his company wound up competing against a smaller set of bidders. “Here we are now,” he said.
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Story contributed by Stefani C. O’Connor.