Muss Development completes Brooklyn hotel

By Carolyn Rushefsky
Advance Business Writer

The developer, a major presence on the Island, has brought the borough over the bridge its first new hotel in 7 decades.

Joshua Muss of the Muss Development Company, whose upscale housing projects include Captain's Quarters, Prince's Bay, has just completed Brooklyn's first new major hotel in nearly seven decades.

Known as the New York Marriott Brooklyn, the seven-story hotel and 32-floor office complex at 333 Adams Street is near Brooklyn Heights and about 10 miles from Staten Island. Most importantly for future business, it's just a short trip on a free shuttle bus from Manhattan's financial district.

As grand as the new hotel is, it was the office building that fetched the funding. Nobody wanted to invest in a hotel in Brooklyn back in the early 1990's, said Muss, who was convinced the time was exactly right.

"We were hired 15 years ago in 1983 to start this project. No other developer was interested in Brooklyn so I must have been relatively insane," Muss said at the new Marriott last week, while workers on ladders strung wires above the ceiling and others on their knees tacked carpeting in hallways leading to dozens of conference rooms. Outside, beyond the marble-floored, glass-walled lobby, freshly poured concrete was drying in the late afternoon sun. Despite its still under-construction appearance, the hotel will be ready when the first guests arrive Tuesday, said Lucy Bossert, a spokeswoman for Marriott's seven New York metro area hotels.

Marriott's guest projections include Staten Islanders who are expected to attend conventions and hold weddings in the new Brooklyn hotel, said Ms. Bossert. Islanders' relatives are also expected to stay at the Brooklyn hotel while visiting New York, she said. However, Manhattan is the hotel's obvious target, judging from the hotel's promotional map. The Marriott is depicted on a tiny sliver of downtown Brooklyn, with Manhattan taking up almost the entire map.

Built on the site of a former underground municipal garage that was topped with weedy lawn and benches, the hotel's construction was the easy part, said Muss, a Queens-based developer who also has a management and construction office in Stet Corners. "The difficult part was getting the initial approvals, permits and financing," which took so long that "the first shovel didn't go into the ground until July 7, 1996," Muss said.

"This is my first and last hotel project," Muss said, then smiled, adding, "but I change my mind sometimes."

The hotel isn't Muss' first building saga. Captain's Quarters, in Prince's Bay, took 30 years to guide it from its original concept through the minefield of building permits and zoning regulations to the sale of the last townhouse, which occurred just recently, Muss said.

"These all turn into 30-year projects so you need more than one generation" to get everything done, Muss said. The 56-year-old developer's grandfather, Isaac, began the family's construction business after immigrating to Brooklyn in 1906 from Russia via Capetown, South Africa. In 1945, Joshua's father, Hyman, took up the construction banner, followed by Joshua in 1965. In 1990, Joshua Muss' sons Jason and Joseph, and daughters Robin and Jacqueline, entered the business.

Muss Development's other Island projects include the Woodbroke in Rossville, a 1,200-unit planned residential community completed in 1993, and the upgraded Eltingville shopping center on Amboy Road with tenants that include Perkins Family Restaurant and Genovese Drug Store. On the drawing board is Prince's Point, an 18-acre residential waterfront community in Prince's Bay, with construction planned to begin by the end of next year, Muss said.

"Our expertise is to build retail, commercial, residential, nursing homes and industrial projects in the boroughs," Muss said.

He estimates the cost of the 400,000 square foot Marriott Hotel and 820,000 square foot office building complex called the Renaissance Plaza at $230 million, including 376 rooms, 27,000 square feet of convention and meeting space, a restaurant, bar and lobby lounge, as well as 1,100 parking spots, a day care center for guests and employees, and an 8,000 square foot health club with a 75 foot lap pool. The 18,105 square foot ballroom will accommodate nearly 3,000 guests. A kosher kitchen and wedding chupah will be available to tap into the city's Orthodox Jewish community.

Brooklyn's last grand hotel was the former St. George Hotel, now cooperative apratments and a private health club. Muss Development's next projects slated for Brooklyn - the Oceana, an 850-unit oceanfront, residential community on the site of the old Brighton Beach Baths.

Asked what he thought of the proposed Holiday Inn adjacent to and above the St. George Theater on Staten Island, Muss replied, "There's potential for a first-class hotel there."

Muss, whose company owns 60 Bay Street in St. George, said the ultimate success of the hotel project (proposed by Calco Management Constultants, Rosebank) depends on the cooperation of city planners to improve the Island's downtown area. The new St. George ferry terminal and museum and other initiatives should quickly be put into place because they would pave the way for further development including a hotel, Muss said.

"One improvement begets another," he said.