The Plaza and Trump Soho Did It. Now the Waldorf-Astoria May Be Doing It

New York City may be home to yet another hybrid hotel-condo soon, as Crain’s reports that the Chinese Anbang Insurance Group, which bought the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 2015 for about $2 billion, is apparently moving forward with plans to convert 1,000 of the hotel’s roughly 1,400 rooms into luxury condo apartments.

Such a conversion would be consistent with a filing Anbang submitted to the city last year, according to Crain’s, when it subdivided the building into sections for condos, a hotel and retail. Anbang set aside about three-fourths of the building for residential use, according to a document filed with the city’s Department of Finance.

A spokesman for Anbang said “no definitive plans have been finalized at this time.” Last year the City Council passed a law banning hotels with more than 150 units from converting more than 20 percent of the property into residences for two years without going through a lengthy review process. But the Waldorf is exempt because the sale to Anbang happened before the ban went into effect.