Good location, but most likely I won't go back...
Before I start with the negative, let's highlight the good points:
1) Location: The hotel was located in a safe neighborhood & easily accessible.
2) No bed bugs : this speaks for itself. 
3) Friendly front desk staff at check-in. The gentleman who greeted us at check-in was very friendly & welcoming, definitely something nice to see in a large hotel. This was the bright spot for me in the entire trip. 
But unfortunately, there was some room for improvement: 
1) Maintenance: Our room phone was not working. No dial tone, no nothing. We actually went down to the desk and told someone, they assured us it would be fixed, but that never happened. 
2) What "recent renovations"? : The room itself was small (not unexpected in a NYC hotel) but also shabby. The TV was an old model with poor picture and sound quality & the beds were tiny. The shower had several cracked tiles, and it looked like someone just put a hammer through the wall in the shower where the shower head came out. The carpet was, frankly, rather scary, and even had the perfect impression of the iron
3) Heating & A/C: We stayed in February, and found that the heat was hard to manage. The room had a radiator heat source that even with the valve fully closed threw so much heat that we had to run the (window-mounted) A/C unit all night. 
4) Elevators: The elevators are slow, which was mentioned by other reviewers. Our room was fairly close to two different elevators, and often we found ourselves waiting an average of 5 minutes for an empty car. 
All in all, the bright spots don't make up for the bad points, and unfortunately, I don't think we'll stay there again.