Danny Meyer is crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.
Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group will open its first full-service Brooklyn restaurant at the historic Hotel Bossert in Brooklyn Heights. The restaurant will occupy 3,200-square-feet on the ground floor at 98 Montague Street, the landmarked former hotel that’s being restored and redeveloped as condos.
The restaurant – from the company known for Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and the Modern – is slated to open in 2028, according to a press release.
The property’s journey has been long and winding. The New York and Nashville-based developer SomeraRoad purchased the building last year for $100 million after it spent more than a decade in development limbo.The seller was Beach Point Capital, which took over the hotel from the Chetrit Group in February at a foreclosure auction, nine months after the investment management firm purchased the note against the property.
Joseph Chetrit and David Bistricer purchased the 14-story building from the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2013 and promised to restore it to its former glory, including adding 78 guest rooms, a restaurant and a rooftop bar. A year later, renovations were underway.
But plans got delayed. In 2019, Chetrit bought out Bistricer’s interest and secured a $112 million loan from Cantor Commercial Real Estate Lending. The loan was assigned to Wells Fargo a year later, when Covid arrived in New York, and went into special servicing in August 2020.
Chetrit defaulted on the loan in 2021, according to court filings; Wells Fargo initiated a foreclosure last May, claiming Chetrit owed over $126 million.
Lumber magnate Louis Bossert built the hotel in 1909; it later became known as Brooklyn’s Waldorf-Astoria. The Jehovah’s Witnesses bought the building in 1983.
SomeraRoad, founded in 2016 by Brooklyn resident Ian Ross, is no stranger to sprucing up older properties. In 2022, the firm purchased a commercial condo unit above the popular power lunch hangout Harry’s at 1 Hanover Square for $6 million and converted it to boutique offices.
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