A Condo Hotel for Westbury's Empty TGI Fridays Corner

The TGI Fridays at 829 Merrick Avenue in Westbury closed in the fall of 2024, when the chain went through bankruptcy. The building's new owner now wants the Town of Hempstead to rezone the three acre corner of Merrick Avenue and Corporate Drive and add a new use to the district it would join: a condominium hotel, four stories at most.

The Hempstead Town Board held the public hearing on September 9. As of today the town has posted neither minutes nor a decision.

What was sold, and to whom

Mattone Investors announced in May 2025 that its affiliate, Matgart Merrick Avenue Associates, had sold the property to the Beechwood Organization for $12.75 million. The announcement describes a 10,064 square foot building on three acres, left empty when the restaurant closed.

The petition before the board comes from Beechwood 829 Merrick, LLC. The town's hearing resolution places the parcel at the northwest corner of Merrick Avenue and Corporate Drive, with about 422 feet of frontage on Merrick Avenue and 310 feet on Corporate Drive. To the west is land owned by ASN Roosevelt Center, LLC, and to the north is land held by the Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency.

What the petition asks for

There are three pieces. The first moves the lot out of the town's X Business and Y Industrial districts and into its Planned Unit Development district, joining the adjacent Northeast Quadrant of that district. The second adds a condominium hotel, which the code calls a condotel, to the list of principal permitted uses in the Planned Unit Development district. The third is review and approval of a master plan for the site.

A condominium hotel generally means a building that runs as a hotel while its individual units are sold to separate owners. The standards the petition would put into the code are specific:

No building may exceed four stories or 50 feet, although gabled roofs, dormers and rooftop equipment enclosures may add up to 25 feet more. Buildings may cover no more than 40 percent of the parcel. Density is capped at 30 units per acre and the floor area ratio at 1.50. At least 32.5 percent of the site has to stay landscaped open space. Parking is one space per unit plus half a space per bedroom. A 25 foot buffer is required along any edge that meets the boundary of the district, except where the neighbor is zoned X Business or Y Industrial.

What those numbers allow

The town's own dimensions put the lot at a little over 130,000 square feet, just over three acres. At 30 units per acre, that caps the site at roughly 90 condotel units. A floor area ratio of 1.50 allows about 196,000 square feet of building, and the 40 percent coverage limit keeps the footprint near 52,000 square feet or less. The petition as published does not state how many units Beechwood intends to build, so those are ceilings, not a plan.

The parking rule is the one that shapes the building. Ninety units with one bedroom each would need 135 spaces, and larger units need more. On a lot that also has to keep a third of its area green, parking and density will trade against each other.

Why the corridor should notice

A freestanding chain restaurant on a big parking lot is a common building type on Long Island's commercial roads, and when the chain behind one fails, as TGI Fridays did here, the owner is left with a large lot zoned for business or industry and a building designed for one kind of tenant. The question that owner faces is what else the land can legally become.

This petition is one answer, and a narrow one. It does not add condotels to the business or industrial districts. It adds them to the Planned Unit Development district and moves one lot into it. An owner elsewhere on the corridor would need the same kind of rezoning to follow.

What it means for members

If you run a hotel or a hospitality business along the Merrick Avenue corridor in Westbury, plan for as many as about 90 new rooms on this corner if the board approves, and watch the Town Board agendas for the decision before you set next year's rates. If you own a shuttered restaurant pad or similar site in the X Business or Y Industrial districts, read the standards in this petition closely, because once they are in the code they are the template a rezoning request next to the Planned Unit Development district would be measured against.