QNS
The Paper Factory, a boutique hotel in an industrial section of Long Island City, has been acquired by The Collective, the British pioneer of the communal living movement.
The Collective will transform the building, located at 37-06 36th St., into a co-living environment and cultural destination that integrates the surrounding neighborhood at the southern end of the Kaufman Arts District.
The Collective bases its unique living environment on “A Theory of Human Motivation” by American psychologist Abraham Maslow, which he published in 1943. In it, Maslow described the “hierarchy of needs,” five different levels that when met allows a person to “self-actualize” reaching their fullest potential as a human being.
“We are profoundly excited for our arrival in Queens,” The Collective Founder and CEO Reza Merchant said. “We love to join culturally vibrant neighborhoods who are embarking on their own phase of change, and to work alongside locals to understand their current needs. Our vision for Paper Factory is to activate an inspiring environment where the community of Long Island City and our members can share unforgettable, enriching experiences that have a lasting impact on their lives.”
The Collective’s members can take advantage of flexible terms starting from a single night up to a few weeks, with all amenities, utilities, Wi-Fi, linen change and concierge services rolled into a single, simplified cost.
The first phase of rejuvenation at Paper Factory will its expansive ground and basement floors into a
highly varied series of spaces designed to host daily experiences, ranging from cutting-edge music programming to educational gatherings around the future of living to mindfulness and wellbeing workshops. The program, which will be open to members and to the public, will strike a balance between intellectual growth, spiritual inspiration and cultural discovery.
“We are very focused not just how people feel in our spaces, but what they may become there,” Merchant said. “We take a huge amount of inspiration from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and believe it is our duty to cater to all needs of the pyramid, starting from essentials like food and shelter. All the way to the top, which is self-actualization. Seeing people grow and achieve their full potential in life is what gets us out of bed every morning.”
Despite all the vibrant marketing jargon here (which is also disturbingly cult-like), this is a glorified and stylized homeless shelter.
9 comments:
Cult
Sounds like HPD & DOB violations
It’s not a long term rental - what laws covers this type of dwelling?
"Up to a few weeks", huh. Wait until the first residents start exercising the 30 day rule for lease application and we'll see how long this "hostel" lasts.
So what wasn't discussed was that the "Luxury Hotel" obviously failed. We are over-built on this stuff now folks, and expect to see more of this co-living shit (aka SROs and shelters) coming.
The Collective? Is it run by the Borg?
So sick of hearing about CULTurally vibrant things. Sooo 2010.
This isn't new, it's just being better marketed than before.
As long as housing prices remain sky-high and only the very rich can increasingly afford to live anywhere decent, this is just a symptom of the underlying problem. You can either bemoan it or deal with the root cause, which is that regular homes in our borough should NOT be going for north of 1.6 MILLION!
This place near me sold for 170K in '97; 20 years later, some dingbat thinks its worth $1,690,000!? A 900% increase, seriously? Re-fucking-diculous. Eventually things may change and make a hypocrite of me but I'd like to think I have more integrity than greed to ever sell mine anywhere near that....because once you do, you won't have a middle-class neighborhood of regular joes anymore, and you just fucked your home-owning long-term neighbors still residing here over, thanks. Maybe it's different when a no-name Chinese company is waving a big wad of cash in front of your nose and you're unencumbered by things like a spine or morals.
When the surrounding hoods of Maspeth, Ridgewood, etc were developed they were never meant to be allowed to appreciate this much for so very LITTLE in actual, underlying value - they were the very definition of affordable, working-class homes: cold-water flats and duplex row-homes. Elm is a bit different because it started out as a few giant farm homes and then got "filled in" with more modest ones by Samuel Lord ahead of the LIRR's arrival, but both kinds (my smaller one included) are not anywhere worth list prices. Mass delusion prevails...a similar place on Judge is going for 1,250,000, so I saw yesterday walking up Broadway by Whitney.
What's the solution? You can't artificially impose price ceilings on any 'free' market without doing as much or more harm than good.
But you can't continue to let hordes of foreign buyers bid up the market with all-cash offers that make MY property taxes increasingly unaffordable (the City LOVES that, by the way, obviously). Drive out the middle-class people still able to afford living here, and you've got a City of the very, very poor, and the very, very rich.
THIS is the real and present threat to the fabric of our remaining normal-nice neighborhoods that the likes of Holden should be kept up at night thinking of how to halt. You don't stop this madness, you're not gonna have a City, just a bunch of monopoly playing pieces.
It’s more like youth hostel.
"But you can't continue to let hordes of foreign buyers bid up the market with all-cash offers that make MY property taxes increasingly unaffordable (the City LOVES that, by the way, obviously). Drive out the middle-class people still able to afford living here, and you've got a City of the very, very poor, and the very, very rich."
This is the line of the year and next year and the year after that if this plague of conceptual housing and market fabrication/speculation continues.
Don't be surprised if the yellow vests happen here too.
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