Speculating on Stephen Starr’s Hotels

Stephen Starr has been talking about hotels for years. This Philadelphia Business Journal article has Starr getting into the hotel business back in 2004. But then came the economic downturn and boutique hotels stayed on the back burner. So during ThinkFest Starr mentioned opening two boutique hotels in Philadelphia. One near Rittenhouse Square and another in Fishtown.

So that got us sniffing around for where those hotels might be. The potential Fishtown location seems fairly straight forward to us. Roland Kassis of Northern Liberties based Domani Developers has proposed a hotel for the old Arctic Cold Storage building at 1224 Frankford Avenue. Kassis also owns the bricks at Frankford Hall and Fette Sau. So Starr and him have worked together already and the proposed concept sounds nearly identical to what Starr floated during ThinkFest.

As for the Rittenhouse location. We hear that the four lower floors at Parc Rittenhouse (above Parc)  could become Starr’s Rittenhouse boutique hotel location. Can’t really beat the location, and Parc isn’t a bad hotel restaurant. It is also an Allan Domb property and Domb’s name appears on more Starr Restaurants liquor licenses than even Starr himself.