Spain beat France to reach Sunday’s World Cup final, and for these last few days before kickoff, the team is sleeping on Bloomfield Avenue. The MC Hotel, at 690 Bloomfield Ave., is Spain’s base ahead of the match, the fourth World Cup team to check in there this summer at a boutique property that a year ago wasn’t chasing FIFA’s business at all.
We sat down this week with Jeff Sica, who owns the MC Hotel through his company, Circle Squared Alternative Investments, on the hotel’s rooftop.
The MC Hotel Didn’t Expect to Become Montclair’s World Cup Hotspot
The MC Hotel has become, if it wasn’t already, the go to hotel in Montclair. Sica was candid about how far outside his own expectations this summer has run. “I wasn’t a soccer fan,” he told us. “We hosted England, we hosted Germany, we hosted Norway, and this week we’ll be hosting whoever wins the Spain-France game. It’s exciting. I never imagined there were this many fans nationwide, this many people who would come to the tri-state area to see it.”
That kind of demand doesn’t leave much room to plan around. In some cases, FIFA buys out the entire hotel, and once that’s confirmed, the property goes fully private. That means guests who booked a room at the MC Hotel long before FIFA ever got involved didn’t get to keep it.
“We had to cancel reservations, we had to offer vouchers, but I felt bad… we took an active role in finding them other places to stay,” Sica said.
It’s a level of disruption most hotel owners would dread. Sica frames it as the cost of doing business with the biggest sporting event on earth, and one he’d take again.
How the MC Hotel Became FIFA’s Address in New Jersey
Sica didn’t set out to become a World Cup hotel, and his path to owning it at all had nothing to do with soccer. He was an original investor when the hotel was built in 2019, watched it go through the pandemic like every other property in town, and in 2024 the prior owners decided to sell. Rather than let another buyer take over, Sica put together a group and bought it himself. “I fell in love with this hotel, I fell in love with the staff, I fell in love with the town of Montclair,” he said. His firm, Circle Squared Alternative Investments, has done 3,000 apartment units around the country, but the MC Hotel is personal in a way those projects aren’t. He took over in April 2025.
None of that history meant FIFA came easy. “FIFA came to us primarily because of our location, and the fact that we’re an Autograph Collection Marriott,” Sica said, referring to Marriott’s boutique line of independently styled hotels. “But they had so many expectations, they needed logistics, they needed the rooms to be a certain way. It was a long, extensive vetting process… We believed it would be worth it because we needed to make a safe place for the players, for our guests. They really looked closely at our staff. They really wanted to see if we had the type of staff they could count on, and we have an incredible staff here.”
By his count, the MC Hotel is the only property in New Jersey to host four World Cup teams in one tournament, three plus the final. It’s a claim he repeats with real pride.
What Hosting a World Cup Team Actually Looks Like Inside the MC Hotel
Turning a Montclair hotel over to FIFA means giving up control most owners never would. Sica laughed describing it. “When England was here, one of the things I found funny is, this is my place, and the security would tell me where I could stand and not stand,” he said. “I thought that was extremely funny, because I’m thinking I could stand wherever I want. But I complied with it… the security is overwhelming. There’s dogs, there’s troopers, there’s Montclair PD, there’s all the FIFA security. It’s a very stringent, buttoned up situation.”
That stringency caught up with him personally. There’s a part of the hotel, where the offices are, that Sica rarely visits. “I get lost, I get confused walking around,” he said. “I asked security, and security came up to me and said, who are you? I told them, I’m the owner. They said, well, what are you looking for? I said, I’m looking for this office. And she goes, how are you the owner and you don’t know where that office is? It was sort of an embarrassing moment. But the reality was, it showed how diligent they were with security and how important it was that they know each and every person.”
The players got small windows of Montclair too. Norway had a day off between matches and wanted to jog around town. One of the hotel’s security staff, a retired trooper working FIFA detail, offered to run with them and asked how far they wanted to go. It was close to 98 degrees that day. “The Norway guy said five miles,” Sica said. “He said, five miles in this heat, well, you’re on your own.” They ran it anyway.
Germany’s players took their own walk around town. Farnoosh had heard the rumors making the rounds in Montclair, that a player was spotted at Whole Foods, that some of the Norway team wandered into Java Love on Bloomfield Avenue. Sica didn’t confirm those specific sightings, but he didn’t rule them out either. “They did get a flavor from Montclair,” he said. “They did spend some time.”
One image from Norway’s stay stuck with him more than any other. “We’re sitting here with Norway. Norway’s playing cards up on the roof, drinking water, and we’re watching TV. The Norway team is outside, and we’re watching on the screen on the rooftop that the Norway fans are in Times Square, roaring. We have their team right here, and we’re thinking, why are these fans not here?”
Why the MC Hotel’s Owner Says New Jersey Deserves More Credit
Sica credits Montclair specifically. He’s less generous with the state. “The town was crucial,” he said. “The Montclair PD, I’m a huge fan of theirs. I think they’ve been amazing to us. We had to coordinate everything through FIFA, and the FIFA representatives here had a familiarity with the hotel. A lot of them were former law enforcement who already knew us. It was really coordinated.”
That goodwill doesn’t extend past the town line. New Jersey, in his view, did the work and New York got the reward. “I feel like the state could have done more. The quote that I’ve said is, New Jersey wrote the check and New York cashed it… You have the biggest sporting event of the century here in New Jersey, and I would have fought New York tooth and nail to not give up as much as we did to them. They spent hardly any money and they got all the benefit. We paid for all the logistics, all the security, everything, and they got a lot of the benefit. They should send us a fruit basket.”
He’s seen the pattern before, on a different host committee, the volunteer group that helps a region prepare for a major event like the Super Bowl. “I was on the Super Bowl host committee too, and it was the same issue. People come to the game and want to stay in New York… There should have been local events set up for FIFA. I think the towns didn’t know what to do. It caught everybody by surprise.”
What bothers him most isn’t Montclair’s missed spotlight. It’s the businesses near MetLife Stadium that never got a boost. “I’m hearing stories about old school, successful businesses around MetLife Stadium that did worse during the World Cup. That breaks my heart. An event like that should open the gates of prosperity to the businesses that struggle a lot to stay alive, and we had all these people that could have been coming. We should have kept them here. That’s the bottom line.”
What Happens This Weekend
The hotel is locked down through the final. No walk-ins, no lobby sightings, no chance encounters with Spain’s squad. Sica isn’t pretending otherwise, but he’s hoping the town shows up anyway. “We can’t let anybody in. We’re locked down.. But I would love for there to be a big crowd,” he said. “If you’re walking around Montclair trying to catch a glimpse of a player, go in a store, go in a restaurant, spend some money. Give the town some business. That’s what I hope happens.”
He’s already thinking past Sunday, about what a summer like this does for a hotel most of Montclair didn’t associate with international soccer a year ago. “It’s that if it’s good enough for England, Norway, Germany, it’s good enough for us,” he said. “People need to realize you walk in this door, whether you’re an all star athlete or a Montclair resident or a business person traveling, we’re going to treat you like gold.”
“We’re trying to be the living room for the town of Montclair,” he added. “FIFA’s here until Sunday, and then they’re going. We’re staying.”
If you catch a glimpse of Spain’s team around town before Sunday, or you’ve got your own MC Hotel World Cup story from this summer, send it our way. We’re keeping a running list.
Image credit: MC Hotel
