Mid-priced Hilton hotel steps closer to going up in Rockville Centre

A plan to build a new Tru by Hilton hotel in Rockville Centre is moving forward after the developer secured preliminary approval for up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax breaks.

The Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency on Tuesday granted a Freeport-based company headed by Ellis Abramson an early go-ahead for sales and mortgage recording exemptions and 20 years of tax breaks to build the modestly priced hotel.

Abramson plans to spend around $15 million to build the three-story hotel at 144 to 150 Sunrise Hwy., the site of a former Lay-Z-Boy store that burned following a massive truck crash four years ago. Without the IDA tax benefits, the developer said the project would not be financially feasible, according to the IDA application.

The project comes as demand for hotels has grown on Long Island, which has increased room rates, Newsday reported. New hotels can help meet the need of both tourists and business professionals visiting Nassau County and New York City, said Steve Kent, the chief economist for the Long Island Association.

“The business market continues to grow in Nassau, so the need for people who are traveling for business is increasing," Kent said.

The nearly 30,000-square-foot building would hold 63 rooms, according to a news release from the IDA. 

The IDA must hold a public hearing on the potential tax breaks. That meeting has not yet been scheduled.

IDA Director Fred Parola did not respond to a request for comment.

Abramson did not  respond to a phone call request for comment.

The developer has plans to start construction next month, and the hotel would take about a year to build, according to the IDA application. The project would create an estimated 25 hotel jobs and 40 construction jobs.

The developer, 150 Sunrise Highway LLC, bought the vacant lot near the Rockville Centre train station last year, after a February 2022 tanker truck crash led to a massive explosion on the site. The truck flipped and exploded in the middle of the night, destroying most of the Lay-Z-Boy store, Newsday reported. 

Abramson is seeking up to roughly $87,750 in mortgage recording tax exemptions and up to $735,862 in sales tax exemptions to equip the property, according to the IDA application.

Under the proposed agreement, the developer would pay $87,681 per year, which would be divided among the village, town, county and school district for the first three years, and those payments would rise to $550,000 annually by the end of the 20-year agreement, according to a report on the project by Camoin Associates, an economic consulting group.

Without the project, the tax payments on the vacant lot would be lower than the total amount  municipalities would receive under the IDA agreement, according to the report.

Abramson is no stranger to the hotel industry on Long Island. He also owns the Hampton Inn and Suites nearby at 125 Merrick Rd., according to his attorney. 

Hotel occupancy on Long Island has mostly recovered from the pandemic, which shuttered business and leisure travel. Hotel occupancy on Long Island stood at about 73% as of February 2020, dropping to below 50% during the height of the pandemic, and then ticked up slowly to 71.8% as of April of this year, according to data from CoStar, a commercial real estate data platform.

“From an occupancy perspective, the demand is obviously there,” said Daniel Lesser, co-founder, president and CEO of Manhattan-based LW Hospitality Advisors, a hospitality consulting firm.

The average daily rate for a hotel room on Long Island has also shot up, rising from around $157 in February 2020 to more than $207 as of last month, according to CoStar data.

Higher occupancy and room rates both indicate that there’s greater demand for hotels on Long Island, Kent said.

Tourists spent an estimated $7.9 billion on Long Island in 2024, according to Discover Long Island, a regional marketing organization.