January 26, 2006

Brooklyn's Holiday Inn Express aims to open by April

It may be one of the least glamorous hotel openings scheduled for this year, but the Holiday Inn Express in Brooklyn may be one of the most practical.

Located on a semi-residential street pocked with auto repair shops, it's situated where the "slope" of Park Slope flattens out to meet the "Gowanus" of Gowanus Canal. A mere half block from the R subway line, it's a block and a half uphill to Park Slope's 5th Avenue, where the new shops and restaurants is turning this stretch into Brooklyn's new Smith Street. (CitySearch even has a "hot blocks" page dedicated to the area around 5th and Union.)

The Holiday Inn Express has a targeted opening date of March 31, but that's "flexible," Natasha Gullett, spokeswoman for the hotel chain, told NewYorkology. There will be 90 rooms in the 8-story hotel, located at 625 Union St., between 3rd and 4th avenues, map.

Update: Readers at Brownstoner are weighing in on the Holiday Inn news, including on the safety and scenery in the neighborhood:

I have walked down that block hundreds of times over past 20 years day and night over the canal between PkSlope and CarGardens and never had any problem. But itt is very unattractive block of rundown tenements, noisy, and imagine could look very intimitating for out-of-towner to return to hotel at night.

January 26, 2006 12:07 PM in Hotelology, Out of Manhattan

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