Monday, April 30, 2018

City Planning's hotel bill will dump most of city's homeless in Queens

From the Commercial Observer:

The City Planning Commission earlier this week kicked off public review for a zoning change that would create a special permit to limit hotel development in industrial zones. While many in the real estate industry loathe the special permits, some hotel owners are surprisingly in favor of them.

The amendment would require hotel builders in M1-zoned areas to undergo a full public review process in order to get the special permit, which means sign-offs from community boards, borough presidents, the City Planning Commission and the City Council. Unless a developer secures the special permit, the New York City Department of Buildings won’t give the go-ahead to a new hotel project.


Well, this sounds good!

Developers will be allowed to build hotels in only three industrial neighborhoods as-of-right in New York City—East Elmhurst by LaGuardia Airport and Ozone Park and Springfield Gardens by John F. Kennedy International Airport (all in Queens). Special mixed-use districts like Long Island City will also be exempt from the special permits.

Ah, no, this is not what we want. As of right in 4 Queens neighborhoods only?

However, the zoning text amendment does include a potentially controversial carve-out for new hotels that will be used as homeless shelters. Hotels “operated for a public purpose” will not need to go through the special permit process, and hotel-to-shelter conversions will also be exempt from the permit requirement, according to zoning documents from the Department of City Planning.

And there we have it.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why does they city council want any more hotels? We need houses that real new yorkers can live in, not out of towners!

Anonymous said...

Still overbuilding so having the train back barely keeps pace as a people mover. You won't see it stop because real estate is the best place to park investment money. CDs ain't paying shit nor are any other traditional investment products. Then again....real estate is still one of the best ways to launder money!

Anonymous said...

I have no doubt that these hotels will line the Queens-Nassau border. Some of this is already underway. Look at neighborhoods like Queens Village, Floral Park, Bellerose, Glen Oaks, Douglaston...Hotels going up where none every would have been built 10 years ago.

Anonymous said...

Natch!
Queens has the most open space.
An abundance of hotels that have to be filled because of under occupancy.

JQ LLC said...

The real affordable housing program.

You know, it's almost satirical that the city prefers to have the homeless hotels near airports. It's not like the homeless from other states coming here have frequent flyer miles.

Anonymous said...

Well, we need room for all those migrants from Guatemala and Honduras going through Mexico, who will cross our border and ask for asylum in the U.S. and will end up in NYC! (Of course, they are not going to ask for asylum in Mexico.)

Anonymous said...

An abundance of hotels that have to be filled because of under occupancy.

That could have literally been said by Donald Manes.

You are ignorantly confusing cause with effect. Hotel capacity is in oversupply precisely because the proprietors price in the acceptance of transient homeless shelter revenues at taxpayer into their business model when they draft up their development and investment plans. We don't have an obligation to bail out their bad business decisions by accepting blight into our neighborhoods.

LibertyBoyNYC said...

"The real affordable housing program.

You know, it's almost satirical that the city prefers to have the homeless hotels near airports. It's not like the homeless from other states coming here have frequent flyer miles."

Actually, it is.

Anonymous said...

"migrants from Guatemala and Honduras"
Yep, as worse as it gets !
These feral locust people are illiterate in any language, refuse to use birth control and multiply like rabbits. The city wants them to get the federal $$ for the lifetime generations of welfare & services they will require.
This is going to be a disaster because the liberals in California WILL let them in. When this happens millions more will rush the border--millions !!

Anonymous said...

AS JIM MORRISON ONCE FAMOUSLY SAID IN ONE OF HIS BEST SONGS, "THIS IS THE END". QUEENS AND THE OTHER THREE BORO'S WILL BECOME JUST LIKE SAN FRANCISCO. THERE IS NOT TURNING BACK IF THIS BILL IS PASSED !!

Anonymous said...

" I have no doubt that these hotels will line the Queens-Nassau border. Some of this is already underway. Look at neighborhoods like Queens Village, Floral Park, Bellerose, Glen Oaks, Douglaston...Hotels going up where none every would have been built 10 years ago."

Yeah just take a look at who's representing these areas...Grodencik, Ulrich, Vallone, Daneek Miller....all puppets of the Queens machine and the developers...pretty soon Queens will be nothing but a ghetto for the homeless, with some hipster and yuppie enclaves sprinkled throughout it..... Well done

Anonymous said...

So the very "hotels" that we don't want built in our communities are the exact ones exempt from this?

TommyR said...

^Anon: " We don't have an obligation to bail out their bad business decisions by accepting blight into our neighborhoods."

Well put, and bears repeating often and at loud volume...

Anonymous said...

Come on guys, we know what the problem is - the dysfunctional civic cultural of Queens"

1. Civics: you need real civics, not toys of the pols where they fund coffee money for 'listening sessions', photo-ops for local weeklies showing that they 'care', a letter writing campaign to help their agenda (hello Tony and QCC) and a forum for wannabe 'playas.'

2. The Queens Community Boards. The local Party cell in China and the former USSR can learn a few tricks from that crowd. 'Nuff said.

3. Third stringers in life (a study in genetics when anyone with a tincture of ambition moves somewhere else) plus third world types that are hiding or do not have the foggiest notion on American civic culture.

4. Hipshits that meet, mate, and move and can tell you more about Asian noddles than American participatory democracy or the neighborhood they are temporarily parked in.

As late as two or three decades ago Queens was a viable option to even Manhattan - the charms of a small town (with a yard and sunlight) and the big city a few minutes away. Now there is a noticeable difference in everything from enforcement, to medical care, to shopping, to leadership, to your neighbors.

Its a shame. Going forward, this hotel mess will be seen repeatedly in just about every feature no community in its right mind wants. Queens is the trash heap for the Democratic Party of unwanted garbage from the rest of the city.

Anonymous said...

Give them one-way plane tickets and have them go to other cities and towns around the US. Just leave NYC.

Anonymous said...

what does holden say about this he seems bill new buddy

Anonymous said...

well, most residents in Queens are Democrats, so there they have it: "democracy".

Anonymous said...

Why doesn't mayor dumbdumb house the homeless in the houses he owns? This city sucks anymore.

Anonymous said...

Jim Morrison singing "This Is The End" in Queens Forest Hills stadium. The people were clapping & cheering "The end, YEAH (roaring)get lost good riddance"
I think that was the Simon & Garfunkel but cant remember much of that concert other then that.
To many people were smoking dope, I was getting sicker and sicker.
I guess Jim Morrison was right after all, the city immediately started going to shit after that concert and Johnson's bullshit

Anonymous said...

Yawn!
You don't see big hotels in the leafy green northeast. Why?
Tight zoning.
They get dumped in crap locations that are mainly non residential.

Anonymous said...

Hey, let's post this on tourist sites. This way visitors from out of state will puke before they come here and bankrupt the stupid hotel chains that deal with out idiot politicians. The only way to kill these idiot politicians is at the money spout. Bankrupt them. Make them eat the same twaddle they peddle to us.

Anonymous said...

Too many drug dealing around East Elmhurst. Lets remember that area used to be a crime hotspot during the height of the crack epidemic. Literally one of the most dangerous places to live during the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. The area is just recovering from the crack epidemic and dumping homeless folks here will spark another worst crack epidemic. If I start to hear more and more gunshots at night (which are somewhat common) Ill know to pack my shit up and move to brooklyn. I learned my lesson back in the day but I wont be staying to see the bloodshed and crime rise up again. Any crackhead or weed smoker can take my room the area seems to suit you drug addicts sons of bitches. Have fun getting your home broken into at night while the gang members rape your family and steal your flatscreen tv...sad but true.