The Chetrit Group has decided not to convert the former Empire Hotel at 44 West 63rd Street at the south end of Dante Park across from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts to residential condominiums, according to a report published today.

The building was erected in 1892 and had about 375 hotel rooms and the Chetrit Group acquired the property last year from Ian Schrager who had bought it in 1999 when it had been known as the Radisson Empire Hotel.

The Chetrit Group announced plans last year to convert the brown-brick building, which has a two-story limestone base, to 125 condominium apartments.

An article in today's edition of Crain's New York Business by Julie Satow said that "now that fast-paced condo sales have braked, the developer is switching gears and repositioning the dowdy building across from Lincoln Center as a 440-room upscale hotel."

A call to Mayer Chetrit at The Chetrit Group today from CityRealty.com was not returned.

With three main facades, the building occupies a very prime Upper West Side location that has excellent public transportation and shopping and is convenient to many restaurants and Central Park.

In recent years, this property has been distinguished by the unusual curved retail frontage of the Iridium jazz club at the Columbus Avenue corner. The owners of P. J. Clarke's, the legendary restaurant on Third Avenue and 55th Street, have been planned to take over the Iridium space but to replace the curved Iridium exterior.

The hotel closed in 2004 and there were plans to relocate existing permanent tenants within the building and at the Woodstock Hotel on West 43d Street in affordable housing managed by Project Find.

The boom in condominium apartment prices spurred several conversions of hotels into apartments recently including the Stanhope and Plaza Hotels on Fifth Avenue. An equally astounding boom in hotel rates and occupancy recently have led some other conversion projects to change their plans such as the decision of Belfonti Capital Partners and the Carlyle Group to stop their residential conversion of the former Rogers Peet commercial building on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 41st Street across from the library and sell it to the Global Hyatt Corporation. Another canceled residential conversion involved the former Sutton East Hotel at 330 East 56th Street that Alchemy Properties has recently sold to Korman Communities.

This building is topped by a red "Empire Hotel" neon sign that can be "read" from both the north and the south and the building has an exposed rooftop watertank. The building has a large lobby, but no balconies, no garage and no sidewalk landscaping.