No corporate hotel chain (Marriot, Hilton, Hyatt) has you sharing a toilet with others. All of these hotels have locations in Manhattan either midtown or FiDi that are around $250 for April 3-5th. If OP’s company is quite large, it’s possible they also have a corporate discount to use. There are at least 20+ choices between the big three chains and other places like Yotel or The New Yorker.

If you’re paying $500 a night, you’re paying for luxury. Maybe OP can afford luxury with his NYC salary but he only needs about $500 weekly.

OP would be staying two nights a week, on non-weekend nights, and would have flexibility in the type of hotel he can pick. OP can find places for under $250 a night in Manhattan and cheaper if he’s willing to travel to Li city, Brooklyn or Queens.

Depending on how much OP is getting paid, it may be worth it just to get a hotel Monday and Tuesday night if he can do three days in a row in NYC. Especially if it’s a high burn job that doesn’t end until 6/7pm.

Eventually see if either wife can move to a job closer to southern CT or NYC metro area. Or push his office days to just one day a week.

Most towns in CT surrounding Hartford will meet your requirements of 1-3. There are plenty of other towns like Windsor, Manchester, Rocky Hill that also has a good amount of rental options for young working professionals.

Your ask on urbanization is not easily going to be met. Imo even West Hartford isn’t comparable to what most would think of as a “City”. Perhaps downtown New Haven would be as close as you can get in CT and be within reasonable hybrid commuting to Hartford.

Then you’re also dealing with time decay. You may not break even despite higher trending IV if time to expiry offsets.