Crain's New York
Mayor Bill de Blasio has asked the city’s planning department to draft a proposal outlining how to implement a citywide special permit for hotel development, just a few months after a major hotel union endorsed and financially contributed to de Blasio’s presidential campaign.
“The city continues to explore how to implement a citywide hotel permit,” a spokeswoman for the department said in a brief statement. A source at City Planning characterized the mandate as being in a “study” phase.
The request is the first step in crafting what would be a major change to land use policy that could restrict hotel development in the city at a time when tourism has surged and has driven demand for new hotel rooms. If such a rule were to be adopted, new hotel projects anywhere in the five boroughs would be required to pass through the city’s costly and politically-fraught land use review process—a hurdle that many land use experts said would stymie hotel development.
“The city continues to explore how to implement a citywide hotel permit,” a spokeswoman for the department said in a brief statement. A source at City Planning characterized the mandate as being in a “study” phase.
The request is the first step in crafting what would be a major change to land use policy that could restrict hotel development in the city at a time when tourism has surged and has driven demand for new hotel rooms. If such a rule were to be adopted, new hotel projects anywhere in the five boroughs would be required to pass through the city’s costly and politically-fraught land use review process—a hurdle that many land use experts said would stymie hotel development.
“If the city is actually contemplating a ban on hotels, it would be a devastating blow to our remarkably resilient tourist economy, to the many service industries that are linked to hotels and to multiple neighborhoods,” said Mitchell Korbey, a land use attorney at Herrick Feinstein. “There is no land use rationale and absolutely no zoning or public policy justification for this.”
The new rule, if adopted, would make hotel development one of the most restricted use groups in the city—beyond even potentially hazardous operations such as petrochemical storage and other businesses that many city residents might find distasteful, including pornography stores, both of which are permitted as-of-right in specified areas.
The orders from City Hall to explore the policy change come just months after the Hotel Trades Council came out as the sole union backer of de Blasio’s presidential campaign—giving his sputtering bid a lift. A report in The New York Post revealed that about 70% of de Blasio’s presidential campaign contributions have come from the union’s members.
11 comments:
Jeez - I see "hotel" and think homeless shelter, not tourism... an understandable association when you throw in "deBlasio"
After he leaves city hall, the only job he'll be able to get is in hospitality. can you imagine Blass bent down on the floor scrubbing toilets or restocking the mini bar. RTOL !!
You think this is nuts, they're about to "re-engineer" the school districts
https://nypost.com/2019/08/27/see-it-naked-triple-homicide-suspect-leads-cops-on-wild-foot-chase/
PUT UP HOUSING 4 THE HOMELESS MAYOR BIG BIRD!!!!
You have to read the full article to fully understand this. If you just read this it makes no sense since you would think that the building of new hotels would benefit the unions membership. It appears the deal would be that if you want the blessing of the City Council for building new hotels you have to be sure to have those staffed by union members.
And the surprise is?
Hold on now...NYC Hotels become Homeless Shelters in the long run anyway. Oops, DeBlaz didn't think that one out.
Hold on..let me think about this some more. So now I need a special permit to develop a Hotel. So I contribute to the DeBlaz campaign and lo and behold, I get a Permit! DeBlaz just got cheddar from both sides of the fence. Maybe he ain't as dumb as he looks. I hereby retract my first statement.
@ ron s said...
"Nothing to see here, move along folks"!
I just got my permit to park along the school because of the many shootings there has been I need one. Or is it just in south Jamaica??
Naked political opportunism combined with a horrible policy that will actually hurt not help hotels. No one will build any hotels and a LOT of illegal hotels are going to be laughing all the way to the bank
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