ASBURY PARK, N.J.—The new Asbury hotel has an outdoor movie theater, rooftop bar, beer garden, and swimming pool with cabanas made with New York City sidewalk scaffolding.
It’s the type of hotel this once floundering seaside town hasn’t seen in 50 years. In fact, it’s the first hotel opening in Asbury Park in half a century.
The Asbury, which opened Memorial Day weekend but had its official debut this month, is part of a 10-year multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan by iStar that is intended to revive this town along the Eastern Seaboard.
“As the first new hotel in over 50 years, we wanted to truly embrace the community and make the hotel part of this amazing town,” says David Bowd, partner in and operator of the hotel.
The Asbury is the fourth hotel in Bowd’s boutique Salt Hotels brand. Designer Anda Andrei, iStar’s creative director, and her team transformed a vacant Salvation Army building into the 110-room hotel two blocks from the beach.
“To start putting this city on the map, the first thing we had to do was get a hotel so people can some and stay and see what Asbury Park is about,” says Andrei, who is former design director for the Ian Schrager Company. “The first hotel we wanted to do was low-key, super-fun and like an adult camp.”
The lobby resembles an adult camp with a bar in one room and bright blue bleachers in another. A sunken seating pit has chairs upholstered in velvet silk. There’s a photo booth and a giant marquee wall with huge emojis that broadcast the weather and other happenings.
The lobby also doubles as a tomato-growing greenhouse. Guests check in at a welcome desk that also serves as a grab-and-go counter with food and beach towels.
“It’s a big space but at the same time, it has intimacy in it,” Andrei says. “It’s not like a warehouse where you get lost.”
In the guestrooms, lights are dimmable. Concealed nightstands at each side of the bed have easy-to-reach chargers. Bathrooms have wall-mounted Malin+Goetz amenities.
There are suites and regular rooms as well as hostel-like bunk rooms with four or eight-person bunk beds. Each bunk is $50 a night. Regular rooms start at $125.
Guests can check in whenever they’d like, as long as their room is ready. To appeal to tech-savvy younger Millennial travelers, guests can text message the hotel for grab-and-go items.
Outside by the pool is a beer garden with a food truck serving hot dogs and other casual fare. A vintage Volkswagen bus was converted into a refrigerated beer truck.
The Baronet roof deck is covered in thick artificial grass ringed by a classic white picket fence. Guests can play games there during the day and watch movies projected onto the side of an elevator tower at night.
Asbury Park has always been known for its music scene—Bruce Springsteen’s debut studio album was called “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.”—and the Asbury hotel pays homage to that. The lobby has books about Billy Joel, Ozzy Osbourne and Keith Richards, among other artists, and musicians are invited to perform at regular open mic nights.
“You want this to still stay a place for artists,” Andrei says. “For generations who can’t go to the Hamptons, they can come here and make this their town.”
