It has been almost six years since the very popular Senegalese restaurant Baobab (Cabestreros Street, 1) closed its doors in the building that housed it for 14 years and that was a place of pilgrimage for the neighbors of Lavapiés, many of them migrants who found in its dishes a return to their roots. Now, according to ABC, work has already begun to convert it into a capsule hotel.
The owner of the property sold it to the company Fixed Assets Development, according to El Salto, “whose sole administrator is Javier González Herráez”. Herráez is, at the same time, founding partner of Urbex, responsible for the project of the future capsule hotel.
The operation not only has consequences for the former restaurant: the remodeling, which affects numbers 1, 3 and 5, also includes the former Prinoy guesthouse, which housed many long-stay guests who could not afford to pay the prices of rent in the neighborhood as a result of gentrification.
What is known about the capsule hotel?
For the time being, what has transpired about the project is that after the unification of the three numbers it will have 400 m² of plot and 1,800 m² of buildable area, as has been learned by We are Lavapiés. The new business will be a low cost hotel “with large shared rooms that house bunk beds in independent cubicles”.
The project will also include a restaurant, a landscaped interior courtyard and a spa terrace with a rooftop viewpoint. Urbex, by the way, is also responsible for the purchase of the site at 2 Valencia Street for the construction of an IBIS chain hotel.