A series of improvements are in the works at Sky View at Carriage City Plaza, including a new, separate hotel lobby entrance, kitchen and bar service, and rooftop deck.
There is a new investor in the commercial portion of the building who aims to attract tenants for the ground-floor commercial space as well as a new hotel flag. Hotel rooms, which occupy the first three floors, would be renovated as well but there are only prospective new tenants at the moment. The hotel space has been vacant since Hotel Indigo left more than three years ago.
The building’s condominium association approved the renovations during a meeting on Dec. 6 when plans were presented to homeowners. In a brief interview after that meeting, Mark Konarski, founder and managing principal of Westview Group, LLC, and a partner of Flagler Investment Property Group, said he’d prefer not to reveal more details until plans are further along.
According to several condo unit owners, the proposal calls for a separate lobby and entrance for the hotel with access from East Milton Avenue side. The building’s current entrance on Irving Street would continue to serve as the condo entrance. The new lobby area of about 6,000 square feet on the Irving Street and East Milton Avenue corner of the building will include food and bar service. The original concept a decade ago was to have a restaurant fill that space. When the hotel was occupied, a bar featuring light fare operated on the ground floor, just past the original hotel lobby, to the left of the current Irving Street entrance.
There also will be improvements to the 3,000-square-foot rooftop patio, which would be open for hotel guests as well as residents, who would be able to reserve the area for private events. When Hotel Indigo occupied the hotel space, the roof was not open for either residents or guests. Construction would begin as soon as town permits allow, residents were told.
Sky View at Carriage City Plaza was built as a 222-unit condominium. Construction of the 17-story high-rise was completed in 2008 with units beginning to close that summer — weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers that ultimately marked the start of the Great Recession.
About 60 units were sold as condos before the $60-million development went into foreclosure in 2010. The remaining 152 units, along with the hotel and ground-floor commercial space, were acquired in foreclosure 2011 by the current owner, 80 E Milton Avenue, LLC, a subsidiary of LongView ULTRA Construction Loan Investment Fund, a pension fund, of which Amalgamated Bank is a trustee and was the original lender for the project.
Hotel Indigo was the initial tenant of the hotel space but left in 2013 and has yet to be replaced. Earlier that year, the Planning Board gave approval to construct 20 units on the 17th floor, which originally had planned to be larger, penthouse-type units.