November 6, 2007

US & Canada | US | New York

Brooklyn’s Bleu Crush

By Nicole Cotroneo

Swank hotels in midtown? Fuggedaboudit. Manhattan’s neighboring borough joins the competition.

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With red-hot real estate, a thriving art scene, and some newly minted Michelin-star restaurants, Brooklyn’s become the it-borough in many ways but one: it’s always lacked for stylish hotels (unless, of course, you count the Holiday Inn Express). But that changed last weekend, when the long-awaited, 48-room Hotel Le Bleu opened in Gowanus. Granted, Gowanus has never been feted as Brooklyn’s hippest hood (think industrial parks and a notoriously polluted canal). But at least it’s sandwiched between genteel Carroll Gardens and trendy Park Slope (where this weekend travel-gear boutique Flight 001 opens its second Brooklyn store on New York’s other Fifth Avenue). When it comes to interiors, Le Bleu’s got Manhattan attitude, too, with cool white-and-blue guestrooms designed by Montreal hotshot Andres Escobar. They’re kitted with 42-inch plasmas, goose-down comforters and glass-encased “rainforest” showers — several of which take in views of Lady Liberty. In fact, Le Bleu’s panoramas encompass “four boroughs and two states,” manager Robert Gaeta says. You can count them all from the rooftop lounge when it opens early next year.