Wednesday, October 5, 2016

How many homeless could fit inside THIS?


From the Queens Gazette:

Japanese hotelier Toyoko Inn Co. has filed an application to develop a massive 59-story hotel within walking distance of the Queens Plaza transportation hub in Long Island City.

Plans indicate the hotel at 24-09 Jackson Avenue, between 45th Avenue and 23rd Street, will rise 514-feet and will feature 260,857-square-feet of commercial space, with a five-car garage and lobby located on the ground floor.

The project will feature 1,260 hotel rooms – 54 rooms on the second-through-eighth floors and 21 to 22 rooms on each of the remaining floors.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

This location is also in walking distance of the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene HQ. There are already a number of homeless and/or mentally ill vagrants roaming around this area. Some of them go to the DOHMH HQ for services. This location would seem to make more sense than locating people in Maspeth/Juniper Valley etc without access to transit or services. But it sucks for LIC.

Anonymous said...

This site has been vacant for years. I doubt if this Tokyo based company will build. They will hold it just to flip the property for a fat profit.
However, the Japanese are used to living in the smallest spaces imaginable.
Ever see their sleeping berth hotels, where you climb into a "suspended animation" space travel cubby?
The Zen of death, a Samurai cultural legacy.

Anonymous said...

There is a Hilton already in the vicinity and some other high-dollar hotel. Why would they need to build such a large hotel there? It's an ugly industrial area, too. Nothing but girders, ugly hi-rises and concrete around there.

JQ LLC said...

It's easy to be cynical about these predatory developers and poverty pimps, but it's literally to close to transit for it to be considered for the homeless population. The homeless Producers, modern day Bialistock & Bloom-The Blaz and Weasel Banks and their crack overpaid little league hipshit campaigners, the 246, prefer to push the working poor and indigent, the mentally ill, and the recidivist criminals and sex offenders out of sight and preferably out of northeast Brooklyn and Queens and pile them in middle class and neglected towns like Maspeth and Jamaica. Shit, if they wanted to, they would push them out to the Atlantic Ocean on a barge and let it drift there.

This is what it might be...
https://hotel-development.marriott.com/brands/moxy/

Anonymous said...

In that lil' spot? Are they crazy or something? Nothing can really fit into there.

Anonymous said...

...514-feet and will feature 260,857-square-feet of commercial space, with a five-car garage...

A FIVE CAR GARAGE?????

Joe Moretti said...

Didn't a fancy boutique hotel that was not that old (The Verve) which is not that far from there, already was turned into a homeless shelter, so why even make another hotel unless of course the purpose is, yep, more horrendous hotels to stuff homeless people in it so that the city can say "see, we care about our homeless and are doing something". Something that Dickens would have written about.

I mean be real, if tourists really wanted hotels in Queens, wouldn't they be filled to capacity, which they are not. No one comes to NYC for a vacation to stay in, of all boroughs, Queens.

Anonymous said...

There's a big wyndham hotel on Vernon. Hotel Z has been in business for years. Comfort inn was the first hotel in the area by Queens Plaza, and they're still a hotel a decade later. None are going to become shelters, nor will this japanese one. Even the hot-sheets hotel under the bridge was replaced with one that charges 150 a night and has a nightclub downstairs.

If anything south of Queens Plaza is going to be a shelter, it's the 'LIC INN" on 21st street. It's a short ugly building with cheap rooms (compared to the others, which fetch 150-210 per night). I wouldn't be surprised if they are connected to Verve in some way since the buildings look so similar.

The size of this new one is completely on par with the neighborhood. Everything is going high rise in LIC. There is a good article on NYYIMBY showing how completely different the area will look within 2 years. Anyone who hasn't been through here in awhile probably wouldn't recognize the place.

I've counted one regular vagrants along jackson ave. He usually sleeps on a bench across the street from this site. Keeps to himself and seems harmless.

Two vagrants set up camp outside a chinese take out place last year. They lasted maybe 36 hours tops before being given the boot by cops on a monday morning when people realized they were going to try to stay.

JQ LLC said...

"I mean be real, if tourists really wanted hotels in Queens, wouldn't they be filled to capacity, which they are not. No one comes to NYC for a vacation to stay in, of all boroughs, Queens."

Remember that glorious day when a travel publication declared that Queens was the WORLD'S BOROUGH. It was declared the no. 1 destination. Who were the author (s) and chief editor of that rag and was it the inspiration for our caring officials to dole out zoning permits for these guest lodging ruses?

And are they cleaning the blood off the sheets now?

Anonymous said...

The size of this new one is completely on par with the neighborhood. Everything is going high rise in LIC. There is a good article on NYYIMBY showing how completely different the area will look within 2 years. Anyone who hasn't been through here in awhile probably wouldn't recognize the place.
-----

This is about only thing that you wrote will make sense.

Everything goes in cycles. Sure there is a boom now. In 30 years NYC could be begging people to come here as it did 30 years ago. But then, as your are likely a developer, you only think in 40 year time slots, right?

The point of the matter is LIC is a flood plain, pure and simple. Its soil is likely one of the most polluted anywhere on the planet. Add that to the tain yard, lack of infrastructure, and not-very-bright-old-boys-club that runs this boro and anyone that can will leave as soon as possible.

The buildings going up are non-labor and built with the cheapest materials and methods possible.

Sure the waterfront is nice and new and shiny. So was Harlem in the first decades of being overbuilt, too.

Take a close look at all those high rises north of Queens plaza - the ones with the big windows facing the sun that make them drafty and hot by season - and note the cheap heavy curtains that look pretty much all the same. They are being rented out by corporations to house Asian drones for the tech industry.

This will be a 'Japanese' style hotel that will be the perfect conversation into an SRO in a decade or two.

But not to worry, the Queens Library is all geared up to meet the cultural needs of the community and all those 'insiders' that are party of Jimmy's speed dial will get calm assurances as he climbs up the ladder and over their bodies to a bright future

..... for himself.

Anonymous said...

That would be a great location for a homeless shelter! :-) - alfster

Anonymous said...

the "Verde" which is a beautiful hotel in long island city has been a homeless shelter for over a year now -

Anonymous said...

Watch and see another homeless shelter. I guess the mayor found his "affordable housing"
Put them in hotels. The hotel gets the guarantee money from the city on the backs of tax payers.
Taxes going to fund this as the middle class disappears. Nice safe neighborhoods a thing of the past.

Anonymous said...

Nice safe neighborhoods a thing of the past.

no my friend, enough stunts like this an even Queens will wise up so we can say 'nice safe constituents a thing of the past.'

Anonymous said...

I guess the mayor found his "affordable housing"


I guess we need to find Jimmy Van Bramer, Melinda Katz, and Virginia Joe. Believe me, if they opposed this the mayor would do squat.

Anonymous said...

Watch and see another homeless shelter. I guess the mayor found his "affordable housing"
Put them in hotels. The hotel gets the guarantee money from the city on the backs of tax payers.
Taxes going to fund this as the middle class disappears. Nice safe neighborhoods a thing of the past.

WHY NOT? IF THIS IS THE BEST WE CAN DO, ROLL OVER A PLAY DEAD, WHY SHOULDN'T THEY?

Anonymous said...

LIC has become part of Midtown

Anonymous said...

It goes in as a hotel, more easily passed by the local crooks at the community board, then it gets converted to a shelter.
Bingo. Profits are made. Money is laundered. Still....one of the best ways to launder overseas money is through real estate.
Get it? The Chines have been doing it for decades.

Anonymous said...

>no my friend, enough stunts like this an even Queens will wise up so we can say 'nice safe constituents a thing of the past.'

If only.

No one likes DeBlasio, but no one's standing up to run against him, either.

Anonymous said...

That's because the union lobbyists bought and paid for bla Blasio so they can rape us