Turkish Rugs
De Niro said in a phone interview he worked closely with Drukier to design “every detail” at the 88-room Greenwich Hotel, helping implement unusual features such as a swimming pool framed with beams from a centuries-old Japanese farmhouse.
“We are talking about doing another Greenwich or Greenwich-type hotel in another city,” De Niro said about future collaborations with Drukier and Born. “But it has to be the right city.”
The billionaires also have applied their design sensibilities to the other end of the price spectrum, with their two midtown Pod hotels. A bright, closet-sized bedroom comes with a flat screen TV, iPod dock and a nightly rate of less than $200.
More big hotel companies have been pushing into the boutique business. InterContinental Hotels Group Plc, owner of the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza brands, in December agreed to buy the Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants chain for $430 million. Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. said in October it was starting a new boutique brand called Canopy.
Manhattan Focus
“We like to think of ourselves as doing well in both good and bad markets,” Born said. “When the hotel market is busy our properties’ cash flow is much stronger. But because we leave our assets with small mortgages, when the cash flow goes down we don’t suffer.”
Their primary focus remains on Manhattan, a market where asset prices and capitalization rates, a measure of investment yield that falls as prices rise, tend to outperform hotel operations. Investors who would buy their hotels may convert some into condominiums, a possibility that has helped fuel the rise in value, Drukier said.
Born, whose daughter works with him, and Drukier said they would like to pass their empire to the next generation. If that doesn’t work, they said they would rather sell all of their holdings collectively instead of individually.
“Selling one property will not change our lifestyle at all,” Born said. “I’d rather sell them all and sit on an island somewhere.”