Sam Chang Unloads Unfinished Midtown Holiday Inn

New York's "build now brand later" hotel king, Sam Chang, has sold his Holiday Inn Express in Times Square for $42 million, according to city records--and the hotel has not even opened yet.

Construction of the 198-room budget hotel chain at 505 West 43rd Street (one of the McSam Hotel Group's dozens of other midtown hotel franchises in development) is not slated for completion until mid-2009, but buyer Magna Hospitality Group, which manages some of Mr. Chang's other hotels in New York, including the Holiday Inn Express in Brooklyn, closed the deal on Jan. 25