Williamsburg Gets a New Hotel, With a Religious Twist

With other Brooklyn boutique hotels already having cornered the market on BQE views and sound and light, how's a new Williamsburg hotel to compete? At 56 Franklin Avenue's The Condor, the strategy is: cater to the Orthodox Jewish audience! The hotel does that with a Yiddish-speaking concierge and rooms that have women's wig stands but no TVs. Developer Zalman Glauber is relying on this hotel, his first, to bring about some improvement in his fortunes after developing five Williamsburg condos that had, er, a few run-ins with the foreclosure process. But it might take a little while to recoup the $5 million he spent turning a garage into the hotel with starting room rates of $159 a night. On the other hand, those prices might be low enough to bring in the hipster clientele, who could use the wig stands for their fedoras.
· The Condor, hotel for Orthodox Jewish families, opens in Williamsburg [NYDN]