On 45th Street in Middletown, Manhattan, New York City, stands a 19-storey building owned by the Pakistan International Airlines. The Roosevelt Hotel, boasting its Italian Renaissance revival architectural style, is a century-old building that stood through the Great Depression and the Second World War. The building passed from one owner to the other but was acquired by PIA and Prince Faisal bin Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in the Year 2000. PIA then acquired Prince Khalid’s stock and exclusively owned the hotel for the next two decades, after which it was shut down due to recurring financial losses in 2020. However, this piece of architecture has more to its history.
In the year 1922, United Hotels, a US-based company, announced its $8 million project to be named after the recently deceased President Theodore Roosevelt. More than the homage, the hotel’s designers explained how the name justified the interior; it was designed similarly to colonial American mansions. The hotel opened its doors to the public in 1924 and became fully functional. But through the decades, its ownership jumped from one to the other. In 1979, a developer, Paul Milstein, leased the building’s operations to Pakistan International Airlines. The lease cost $35 million and was to last 20 years. During the 1990s, Roosevelt became one of the earliest hotels to open a mosque for the public, which attracted hundreds of congregants each week. In 1999, PIA acquired the hotel for $34 million as part of its diversification strategy.
Under PIA’s ownership, the hotel was initially profitable, earning $29 million annually. The success was, however, short-lived. The company soon began proposing within the federal cabinet and parliament to sell out the hotel. By the mid-2000s 2000s PIA was spending $3 million annually for minor renovations. The 2008 financial crisis worsened the situation, as an increasing decline in guest rates pushed the management to offer discounted rates, while the management kept making costly renovations. By 2011, Roosevelt had lost its status as the hotel that hosted large associations and group conventions in New York, as the Wall Street Journal referred to the hotel as “a midprice destination for tourists and industry conference organizers.”
The case of the Roosevelt Hotel serves as a striking example of political indecisiveness and administrative inconsistency in Pakistan’s management of state-owned assets. It has become a prime example of how shifting political priorities and unstable governance impede the effective utilization of valuable national holdings abroad. The fate of this government asset has kept oscillating between successive governments, which ultimately reflects broader issues with the country’s political economy. For example, during the PPP tenure, parliamentarians were actively debating to sell the property, but the PMLN Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, on the other hand, rejected venture capitalist Shahal M. Khan’s $500 million offer to purchase the hotel. And by next year, PIA was contemplating putting the hotel lease for under three to four decades. Yet this plan was reversed, too, as later that year the airline refinanced the hotel again via additional loans.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, became the decisive turning point for the Roosevelt Hotel’s fate. As global travel came to a standstill, the hotel’s financial sustainability reached an all-time low. By March 2020, the company many of the employees were being suspended. By October 2020, PIA officially announced the hotel’s closure due to sustained financial losses. The decision was implemented on December 18, 2020, bringing an end to decades of operations and symbolizing the fallout of years of managerial uncertainty and financial strain.
In an unexpected development, the hotel, however, saw visitors again in 2023, after New York City saw a sharp rise in migrants, and PIA agreed to open the building’s doors, housing as many as 3000 migrants in the temporary Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center. However, this arrangement proved to be short-lived. Amid growing political tensions under the anti-immigrant Trump administration, the shelter was blamed for housing criminals and ultimately led to its closure in June 2025.
Conclusion
The case of the Roosevelt Hotel is a striking example of prolonged mismanagement and policy inconsistency within Pakistan’s state-owned enterprises. Its decline is a case study for how a lack of strategic foresight and ineffective oversight mechanisms can erode the value of national assets, both abroad and domestically. This case has undeniably revealed systemic issues with how the governance framework is structured in Pakistan and how politicizing commercial decisions continues to undermine the sustainability of state-owned enterprises.
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Zainab Kashif is a bachelor's student of public administration at NUST, Islamabad. She is passionate about geopolitics and policy preparedness.