Progress Report: 163 Orchard Street Hotel

163 Orchard Street was resuscitated back in January after having flat-lined over three years ago. The mid-block parcel began teeming with activity. Some serious scaffolding quickly arrived at the long-fallow lot, signaling the imminent rise of another unneeded Lower East Side hotel. And that’s just what happened.

In the ensuing period, the finger building – a boutique lodge once named Stories_NY – has quickly broken the old world tenement threshold. Its current height is at roughly eight stories, solidifying its place in the ever-rising neighborhood skyline. So, now there’s something to show for the constant staccato of hammer clanks and other construction site sound effects.

But there’s more. Revised renderings were recently released by ADB Associates, the architecture firm presently at the project helm. Not surprisingly, the reworked images are no less disturbing than those we saw at the beginning of the year.