That is not a feature of the pitch. It is simply what 30 years of continuous hotel development and management looks like when it is built by one person, one project at a time.
Viral started in hotel operations in the mid-1990s, working his way through front desk, night audit, night manager, revenue management, and assistant controller at boutique and branded properties in New York. That progression through the property — reservations systems, rate strategy, overnight operations, and the direct-bill accounting that lenders eventually scrutinize — shaped how he thinks about hotel performance. He was not coming from finance into hotels. He came from hotels, and learned the finance as the deals required it.
In 1997 he founded Able Management Group in Plainview, New York. The first ground-up development — a 64-key Hawthorn Suites in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania — opened in 1998. A 111-key Wingate by Wyndham in Brentwood, New York followed in 2004, built on a panelized steel structure with horizontal directional drilling under a four-lane parkway to reach the sewer main. Construction financing came from ICB of New York; GE Capital placed the permanent take-out. The property was subsequently leased on a NNN basis to Suffolk County at $2.8 million per year, appraised at $32 million on the NNN income, and sold in 2015. In 2009 he acquired the Holiday Inn Plainview in an all-cash short sale from Astoria Federal Bank — fourteen-day close, $6 million — financed the gut renovation through M&T Bank, and rebuilt the hotel's operating performance from negative $700,000 NOI to positive $1.6 million annually. IHG recognized the project with its 2012 Renovation of the Year award. A $12.6 million CMBS was placed in 2013 on stabilized cash flow. The asset sold at $21 million-plus in a final exit in 2024. The company was renamed Azure Hotel Management as the platform's scope expanded beyond its Long Island origins.
The Jamaica Queens Hilton Garden Inn — 221 keys, 26 stories, at 93-43 Sutphin Boulevard — came out of an RFP award from the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, MTA, and LIRR in 2015. The project has a Hilton franchise agreement in place, a 25-year ICIP tax abatement, Qualified Opportunity Zone designation, a building permit, and completed site work. A 120-plus key extended-stay hotel in Yaphank, New York, with site control secured and municipal approvals in process, is the second active development. A private investment program focused on distressed hotel acquisitions along the Eastern Seaboard — CMBS-matured assets, under-capitalized properties in need of capital and operational repositioning — is the third current line of activity. All three run from the same desk.
Franchise approvals for Wyndham, Marriott, IHG, and Hilton were earned through completed projects — ground-up developments, gut renovations, and PIP executions that met or exceeded brand standards. The IHG Renovation of the Year award in 2012 came from a project, not a relationship. The Hilton Garden Inn franchise agreement for Jamaica Queens was negotiated directly and ratified by Hilton Corporate before the first investor conversation.
Those approvals mean that when a new acquisition or development moves to franchise selection, the conversation starts with a track record on file at each brand, not a first introduction.
The first ground-up project opened in 1998. The Wingate by Wyndham in Brentwood required horizontal directional drilling under a four-lane parkway to access the sewer main — a construction problem solved before the hotel could be built. The Jamaica Queens project is a 26-story cast-in-place concrete structure in a dense urban transit environment. Each project has added something the next one required.
Qualified construction management professionals are engaged for each project. The principal's role is to scope, select, direct, and hold them accountable — a function that only works when the principal has built things before.
Construction financing on the Wingate came from ICB of New York. The permanent take-out came from GE Capital. The Holiday Inn Plainview renovation was financed through M&T Bank, and the stabilized asset was placed into a $12.6 million CMBS in 2013. Each of those transactions required a different type of capital relationship, and each one produced a closed loan and a returned lender.
The Jamaica Queens project — a 221-key, 26-story Hilton Garden Inn with a franchise in place, ICIP abatement, and QOZ designation — is the largest transaction on the platform. The capital structure experience behind it was built from smaller transactions that actually closed.
Urban Hotel Capital does not maintain a large permanent staff. For each project, qualified architects, structural and MEP engineers, environmental consultants, geotechnical firms, and legal counsel are engaged based on the specific requirements of that transaction — market, building type, municipality, and franchise brand. The same is true of construction management: each project is delivered through a qualified, experienced construction manager selected for that scope of work.
That approach is not unusual for a development platform of this size. What it does require is a principal with enough development experience to scope the work correctly, select the right professionals, and manage them through a project lifecycle. That experience has been built across six completed projects since 1998, in three states, under four different franchise brands, with five different capital structures.
The Jamaica Queens Hilton Garden Inn is a 26-story, 221-key ground-up development in a transit-oriented urban environment. The project team — architects, structural engineers, MEP consultants, geotechnical and environmental professionals, and construction management — has been assembled around the specific requirements of a high-rise hotel on an active transit corridor in Queens, New York. All DOB-approved construction plans and specifications are in place. Site work is complete. The construction manager holds a pre-construction agreement with conversion to a Guaranteed Maximum Price contract upon full construction document completion.
The distressed acquisition program requires different capabilities than ground-up development — due diligence, PIP scoping, brand re-flagging, and operational turnaround. As that program advances, the professional relationships that support it are built from the same base: franchise contacts at four brands, capital market relationships developed through closed transactions, and construction knowledge applied to PIP execution rather than new construction. The platform grows by doing more of what it has already done, not by adding overhead ahead of the deals.