By Sean O' Driscoll

Fitzpatrick Hotels is to open its largest ever hotel on 29th Street in Manhattan, the company told the Irish Voice.

The hotel will cost $130 million and is backed by a wealthy Irish investment group led by Dublin-based Cathal McGinley of the KMS property company.

The new hotel, on 29th Street and Sixth Avenue, is part of a huge expansion plan by Fitzpatricks, which will see the company look for new sites in Washington, Boston and one other location in New York.

The hotel, which will have 250 rooms, will be the centre point of a $500 million apartment and shopping complex and will be finished in 2009.

The new hotel will be the fifth property managed by the group in New York. The chief executive of the Fitzpatrick U.S. group, John Fitzpatrick, said he was “thrilled” to have a location in Manhattan’s mid-West Side.

McGinley has previously worked with the Fitzpatricks on developing the company’s hotel in Chicago. The hotel purchase is just part of a huge New York spending spree by Irish business people.

One group of investors recently spent $180 million buying up 140 apartments in Rockefeller Plaza. KMS is also selling a 478-unit property on West 42nd Street, mostly to Irish investors.

McGinley said that, by the first quarter of next year, he expects Irish investors to pump $1 billion into the New York property market through his KMS group.

Many investors are pulled to New York by its rental income, the investor return on selling property and the an emotional attachment to the city.

KMS is also acting as an adviser to a $63 million apartment development in the Chicago Fitzpatrick Hotel, which is being sold to Irish investors, with $245,000 paid for each of over 100 units so far sold.