Klus Ortleib, the hotel's managing partner, wants the place to fit in with the edgy local art scene. "When I came up with the idea, people said I was crazy," he said.
The "Trendy" people who don't live in the neighborhood (or care about it if they do) are the primary clientele of Asian Pub and the surrounding area and what makes it desirable to developers. These are the same people who I am sure will be excited for a new hotel bar in the same spot. The place pandered to them and reaps what it sows.
It's not about saving the restaurant; it's about saving the building. Those inside will come and go, but if the building is allowed to be destroyed, you can't ever get that kind of history back. It's the oldest building on Cooper Square, and future generations should be able to see how we once lived and worked. These intimate houses along the Bowery, 6 of them left, connect the larger historic district of the legendary and irreplacable Bowery.
"The building itself is a rare specimen that has remained standing since the transition of the Bowery from a residential area to one that was home to a variety of commercial venues in the early 19th century. While there have been some changes made to the façade of 35 Cooper Square, the building still retains its original twin peaked dormers, chimney, and gambrel roof, and is unmistakably representative of a bygone era in New York City history.
"Given the recent construction projects on the Bowery including the Cooper Square Hotel, a 20 story glass tower which is adjacent to 35 Cooper Square, it is clear that this type of building needs the protections granted by landmark status to survive. Absent these safeguards this building will likely be raised [sic] by overzealous developers seeking to build yet another out of scale structure with no respect for the character and ethos of the neighborhood."
You can hate your neighbors only until you realize you love them.
So it was with The Cooper Square Hotel, which infuriated the testy East Village. Then came the post-construction reveal: Damn, this is one fine-looking, well-mannered new kid on the block.
An intriguing, modern glass tower, The Cooper has enough outdoor garden space to make you think the 6 train added a stop in L.A. The beautiful library off the lobby has a fireplace, bookshelves filled with eclectic volumes from Housing Works, and an honor bar for everyone. (Yes, even off-the-street riffraff like us.) Govind Armstrong’s long-awaited Table 8 outpost will open in February.
Overnight guests (yippee, no more fleabag St. Mark’s hotels!) won’t want to leave, what with the indie movies in the minibar, Red Flower amenities, three bathrobes, and insane city views.
It’s enough to inspire a block party.
Lewd Loud Sound From [XXX] E 5th Street for balcony users at Cooper Square Hotel. Thought you'd be interested.
“We generated over 30 offers in under 45 days,” said First Vice President of Sales, Joe Sitt who exclusively handled this transaction with the assistance of Massey Knakal’s Special Asset Strategy Group. “The buyer is a known and respected developer who performed as expected on a two week T.O.E. close. It just goes to show there is always strong demand when locations are prime,” added Sitt.
Like a spinnaker frozen in glass, the 21-story Cooper Square Hotel billows above beat-up tenement buildings in Manhattan’s gentrifying East Village.
The slim, all-glass tower, enclosing just 145 rooms, makes plenty of attention-seeking gestures. It swells outward as it rises, then tips back. Facets along the side wiggle in and out, changing from glass to hole-punched metal panels. These surfaces look stretched taut, as if under enormous internal pressure.
If it sounds like too many ingredients and too many ideas, [architect Carlos] Zapata molds them into a seemingly effortless whole rather than a nervous assemblage of tics.
He has fused the hotel with a battered tenement building next door, which has been saved along with the tenancy of two women who have lived through the neighborhood’s extended tough times to see it flower.
Zapata animated the entrance by erecting a little four-story tower that bookends the tenement and looks ripped from the main tower at the base. Above, he has peeled away the shiny skin to reveal squared-off tubular shapes in tan and green. This lets the tower echo the ragged silhouette of the long-neglected tenement neighborhood. Its contrasting lightness doesn’t weigh down the layers of red brick, terra-cotta rickrack and dangling fire escapes that give the streets such evocative character.
In spite of its size and contemporary styling, the hotel is no heedless intruder.
Pourt is striving to create a new hybrid, a mixture of coffeehouse and workspace, emphasizing short-term stays. Whether there are enough freelancers and small businesses that can pay those fees is yet to be determined.
It‘s located on Cooper Square, strategically situated near Cooper Union, NYU, Manhattan Marymount College dorms and the Standard Hotel in the bustling East Village. The combined space measures 2,000 square feet.
Founders Matt Tervooren, 28, and 27-year-old Mike Kruszewski, lived in the East Village (Tervooren recently moved to Williamsburg) and met as economics majors at the University of Michigan. When they freelanced, they were “consistently frustrated by the lack of good Wifi, lack of available seating, or having the barista frowning at you if you don’t order more food,” Tervooren noted.
Pourt, he said, “combines the two concepts, a coffee shop with a comfortable work space.” And what differentiates Pourt from other co-working spaces such as WeWork and Regus is customers “don’t have to make long-term commitments. If you’re looking for a permanent office, we’re not right,” he admitted.
Their rent was very high and they had a lot of square footage. They took so much space because they originally thought they could have space in the back where people would pay to work during the day. Their rent required that the work space generate substantial revenue. But nobody wanted to pay $10+/hour to work in the back when there are so many other options nearby. So they tried a bunch of other business models over the past year, trying to figure out how to generate enough revenue to pay crazy East Village rents on a large space that a coffee shop model alone couldn’t support. They were nice guys and worked hard ... it’s a shame.
