Center City Building Adds Extended Stay Suites
A rising apartment tower in the Market East section of Center City is adding 60 units of extended stay lodging to the 180 rentals that will be available upon completion. National Real Estate Development is building the tower as part of a large development project that includes apartments, offices, restaurants, a fitness club, and food markets, to be called East Market. Five floors of the 23-story apartment building at 12th and Market Streets will be leased to Philadelphia-based Method Co., operator of extended-stay hotel brand Roost Apartment Hotel.
A spate of new extended stay rooms will be coming to Center City, where demand for this kind of lodging is high.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Method currently operates two Roost hotels, both in Philadelphia and each with 27 guest suites: the Roost Rittenhouse, near 19th and Chestnut Streets; and the Roost Midtown, which shares the Charles S.W. Packard Building on the southeast corner of 15th and Chestnut Streets with condos.” National managing director Daniel Killinger and Method chief executive Randall Cook made the announcement about the extended stay rooms in tandem.
“For some time, we’ve been looking for inventory on this side of Broad Street,” enthused Cook, co-founder of the five year old Method along with Philadelphia property investor David Grasso. “We’ve always felt some demand from over here that we haven’t been able to serve at our other two locations.”
According to industry data, the demand for extended stay lodgings, which are larger than typical hotel rooms and generally contain full kitchens and other amenities for guests seeking a longer stay than just a few nights, is rising. The Inquirer quotes Tony Biddle, regional leader for CBRE Hotels, a division of real estate firm CBRE Group as saying that Center City has an existing extended-stay inventory of fewer than 1,000 rooms, mostly at Korman Communities’ AKA Rittenhouse Square and AKA University City, the Home2 Suites by Hilton near the Convention Center, the Marriott Residence Inn across from City Hall, and the Windsor Suites Hotel on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
In other words, there is a need for more extended stay rooms, and Method is going to provide them.
