Newsday from New York, New York • 119

URBAN DEVELOPMENT Hotels Hope Times Square Hospitable By Estelle Lander Think Atlantic city is a haven for long shots? The developers of four hotels in the still-tarnished Times Square area are gambling millions of dollars that they can lure business travelers and tourists. Three hotels will open along the corridor formed by Seventh Avenue and Broadway in the 40s by the end of next year and a fourth was just announced. Analysts say the New York City market is strong enough to absorb the additional 2,000 hotel rooms. But the owners are hedging their bets by offering perks such as butler service and marble bathrooms. The current fascination with Times Square started with the announcement of a Times Square redevelopment project four years ago.

Although the prqject has yet to get off the ground, the area is booming. With the success of the Marriott Marquis and soiling changes that added millions of square feet of new office space to the area, developers are betting they can fill up additional hotel rooms. Whether theyre right depends on how quickly the office buildings fill up, hotel industry analysts said. Developers are pinning their hopes on the emergence of the area as a mqjor office area submarket, said Lloyd Lynford, president of Reis Reports Inc. If the absorption rates of the new office buildings are slower than anticipated, it could translate into slower occupancy rates in those hotels." City hotel occupancy rates for the past two years were 78 percent and will stay strong in the 1990s, analysts said.

In this atmosphere of confidence, hotel owners and developers are coming up with features and packages designed to outdo the competition. We have not found a way to refer to it," said Chuck Ocheltree, director of sales and marketing for the Hotel Macklowe, a hotel and conference center scheduled to open early next year. Ocheltree was discussing the art deco design that will appear in each of the hotels 638 rooms. In addition to the design scheme, the Macklowe will offer low rates of about $165 a day, black-leather chairs for conferences, and a frequent-guest program with valet service and favorite-room reservations, Ocheltree said. The Macklowe is the only independently run hotel of the new bunch.

Unlike the other hotels slated for the area, the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, the 315-room Ra-mwb Renaissance and Embassy Suites. The Macklowe, with 460 suites, doesnt have a national reputation or elaborate reservations system on which to cash in. InatAad, the Macklowe is banking on its conference center with 33 meeting rooms and location just north of the garment dis trict to draw business customers. Michael Silberstein, managing director of the 770-room Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, where workers are hammering away to prepare for a foil opening, is unfazed by competitors promises. In addition to conference rooms, his hotel will have marble bathrooms, rooms with two telephone lines and computer modem hookups, and an health chib with a swimming pool, Silberstein said.

Room rates will range from $175 a night to $1,110 for a three-bedroom suite, he said. They are all going generally for the him market, said Arthur Adler, a consultant with Laventhol Horwath. They will generate healthy competition that will be good fin1 the consumer." Standing just beyond the bubble elevators in the eighth-floor lobby of the Marriott Marquis, Ron Carson, a Florida businessman attending a conference, said he would try other hotels. This is a great hotel," he said. But everybody is looking fin the newest and the beet, right? Ten Stein, who works fin her parents hair accessories firm in Connecticut, said her parents Btay at the Marriott for its easy access to the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

But they cant stand the neighborhood because it is disgusting and dirty," she said. When they come fin themselves, they usually stay in email suite hotels on the East Side. At least one of the new hotels is expecting families to come to Times Square fin Broadway shows and restaurants: Embassy Suites, a 43-story hotel going up over the lanHnmrkad Palace Theater. The hotel, whose parent, like Holiday Inns, is Holiday hopes to attract families on weekends when the business travelers have gone home. For up to $240 a night, guests can get a two-room suite with bedroom, living room with pull-out bed and kitchenette, said Richard M.

Rosan, senior vice president fin development at Silverstein Properties. We think theres a tremendous market fin a suites hotel, Rosan said. At $220 a night, the Ramada will feature butler service, exterior glass elevators, a concierge on each floor and a health dub, according to a Ramada spokesman. The hotel will be on a site occupied by a Coca-Cola sign since 1965. Developer Jeffrey Katz, president of Sherwood Equities, said he is negotiating with the beverage company to keep the sign.

Like many hotels, the Ramada will erect lights and neon signs designed to keep the atmosphere of the Great White Way. But Katz promised to go a step further. His five electronic super-signs will be really explosive and very space age," he said. They will take you into the 21st Century. in SURPRISE YEARS IN MAKING Debt Wobbles Integrated Resources NEWSOAY.

MONDAY, JUNE 28. 1989 NY CITY BUSINESS3 the company." But according to some investors, the problems started years ago with aggressive accounting practices that artificially pumped up Integrateds earnings. Integrated, founded in 1969, made a name selling shares in limited partnerships designed to produce tax losses. When tax reform closed those loopholes, it remade itself into a financial services firm. Although Integrated recorded a 1988 profit of $17.9 million, some analysts question how real those earnings are.

As in past years, the company told shareholders that it couldnt finance operations out of cash flow and, hence, would continue to depend on borrowings. Of Integrateds $1.7 billion in reported revenues last year, $182 million was from investment program income, and reflects not cash but the so-called discounted present value of fees Integrated hopes to collect in years to come Continued on Page 7 merdal paper which is very short-term debt that was coming due. Worse, Integrateds bank lenders were canceling the lines of credit hacking the paper. On Thursday, Integrated halted debt payments, effectively defaulting on its $955 million of short-term loans. The announcement set off fireworks.

Integrated stock fell so feat from $12 to $6.25 on Thursday that the New York Stock Exchange was forced to temp porarily halt trading in its shares. Bonds and preferred shares fell like meteors, losing a spectacular 50 percent to 60 percent of their value by the end of the week. Suddenly, the only people on Wall Street who would admit to trading in the stuffwere short sellers, who had been betting the stock would fell for years. So what happened to set off the panic? That depends on whom you talk to. It was a change in perception, said Charlynn Goins, a senior vice president at Integrated.

"There were no changes" we can identify in the structure of By Mary Kuntz TWO WEEKS AGO in Las Vegas, as Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard pummeled each other in an epic boxing match, some of the spectators sitting in the expensive ringside seats were figuring the odds on a different sort of struggle. Word was spreading that Integrated Resources the New York financial services company that seemed to be on the ropes, had attracted a buyer. An unnamed acquirer was going to pay $21 a share, a knockout premium over the current market price of $14.8716. The next day. Integrateds price edged up to But even as lenders mulled the latest rumor, bankers who had been propping up the company with almost $1 billion in short-term loans were taking a harder look at Integrateds ever-growing debt.

The next day, Wednesday, Integrateds investment banker, Drexel Burnham Lambert told the com- -pany it was unable to refinance $373 million in com-1.