Sad news today, friends. The beautiful dream that is Jay-Z having his own hotel looks to be dead. For those not as invested in the hospitality-industry machinations of famous rappers as we are, the plans for the hotel were announced in late 2007; the property, on West 22nd Street, was purchased for $66 million (by the way, we’re all over the real-estate game recently, huh?) and was to be named, awesomely, the J Hotel. The real-estate bust stalled out the plans in late 2008, but we held out hope.
Until today. Reuters is now reporting that Jay-Z is suing Highland and NexBank, the investment firms which serviced the loan he used to purchase the property. Apparently, after Jay returned the property to them in order to get his money back (this is something we assume only Jay-Z is allowed to get away with), the companies allegedly took their sweet time confirming the transaction in order to suck interest payments totaling $3.7 million out of Hova. We have no idea how the legal issues will all play out, but seeing as Jay is basically suing his way out of the situation, we’re not predicting a J Hotel will open any time soon.
This is tragic, because we would love to stay in a luxury hotel that authentically re-created the Jay-Z experience. We can totally picture it now: a complimentary bottle of Armand de Brignac Champagne in every room; Maybach service from the hotel directly to the Spotted Pig; Memphis Bleek on-call 24 hours a day to play NFL Blitz with you or fetch a kiwi Snapple. Ah, well.
