Renderings, Details Revealed for Prospect Hotel
Last night Community Board 7 met for a preliminary discussion concerning the hotel extension proposed at the Prospect Grand Hall. The eleven-story addition would include four stories of above-grade parking – along with another one underground – with the hotel on top. As building owner Michael Halkias told the crowd: “The cake I bring to…
Last night Community Board 7 met for a preliminary discussion concerning the hotel extension proposed at the Prospect Grand Hall. The eleven-story addition would include four stories of above-grade parking – along with another one underground – with the hotel on top. As building owner Michael Halkias told the crowd: “The cake I bring to you: my parking garage. And the cherry on top, the hotel.” Parking did seem to be on everyone’s mind at the meeting. Business owners and a rep from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce brought up the limited amount of spaces in the neighborhood and the relief the 400 extra spots would provide. But as one CB7 member asked, “How much more traffic will the hotel create?” Because the developers are in very early stages, they were not able to speak definitively on the time frame, environmental impact, or a shadow study. But while the crowd seemed concerned, it wasn’t hostile. (No one brought up the scare tactics used in a recent flier for support.) The hotel got the biggest seal of approval from Irene LoRe, owner of Aunt Suzie’s and Executive Director of the 5th Avenue BID. “Only in the last five years have we seen tourists in Brooklyn,” she said. “There are hotels going up all over Brooklyn… why not support a hotel coming from an institution already in the neighborhood?” Check out a few more pictures of renderings after the jump. IMBY also attended and has pictures of the two homes that would be demolished to make way for the garage.
I live behind GPH and I must tell you…As it is, the way they run this place is so inhumane to their neighbors that we can not open our windows during the summer due to the stench of the open rotten garbage conditions, not to mention rats and mice coming into our properties and HUGE HUGE flies.
I can not even imagine what a hotel and 24/7 restaurant service will do to us- not to mention the fumes from the garage. They turn on the newly built exhaust vent from the kitchen, that makes the sounds of a helicopter…and they forget to turn it off most of the times…so it runs overnight which it doesn’t sounds like a lullaby for our families to sleep with.
Mentioning the garage: they are selling this project as 400 parking spaces for the neighborhood. Their own website advertises they can hold up to 7000 people at once in this place,so the parking will be conditional ONLY IF they don’t have events going on… GOT IT!
In order to have this project, they need to change three, yes 3 variances
1- Commercial
2- Height
3- and finally the need to alter the allowance (or whatever is called) to build all the way in the backyard almost touching our properties.
This project will start/set a precendent for other developers to start going as high as this project, and I really wish that is NOT next to your property or land-blocking air, sun and views.
What really matters is for all of you to think why should someone be allowed, only for their personal gain, to change/alter/the laws, at a sacrifice to a residential area. One that is already negatively affected by GPH at its current medium scale?
I really don’t wish any of you to be in our position, I’m not a NIMBY and I agree with progress and gentrification for the community, but if that will be the case.
To close my post, I would like to remind everyone that Lander was the chairman on the 5th Ave Committee when they took away the public city parking on 5th Ave and 16th Street collecting signatures under the pretenses that this project on 5th ave and 16th was for low income housing. They forgot to mention to us that it was going to be halfway house for drug addicts and a population with mental illness. What kills me is not the project, but how they are trying to deceive everyone. Now Lander is one of the cheerleaders for this project; why? because the neighborhood need parking?
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Sorry late to the game, actually had more important things to do than reading this blog (or obviously amusing benson), I have a friend in the hospital…
So, a few points:
1. 16th Street has two major devs btwn 4th/5th Aves with off street parking (about 100+ I think) that vent onto the st.). How will 400 more spaces affect this? (can’t argue this one folks).
2. The entire block above GPH stinks to high hell of sewage. Why? The system is blocked up withing 3 blocks (up, down and across) due to all the new condo units. The infrastructure is failing…how will a hotel impact that?
3. Let’s bulldoze two perfectly fine frame home for DRIVEWAYS (nothing else to say there).
4. My hip-hop comment was quoted directly from NY1 via the owner as some sort of bizarre threat (check the local list servs for complaints about the noise from the “non-low life events’ that already go on). I’m a big Tripe Called Quest, NWA and Wu Tang fan, so I’ll go, if they get back together at GPH.
Finally, I want ONE person who lives within ONE block of this (let alone the adjacent blocks and neighborhood) to explain to me why this high density idea is a “good idea” not worth of the BSA, but worthy of a spot rezoning by CPS?
(crickets…)
I had my wedding in the Picnic House in Prospect Park a year and a half ago. I live in the Slope, don’t have a car and almost all my friends don’t have cars.
Ya know what? We needed more parking. Not a lot more, but a bit more. Family from way out of town stayed at hotels and took the subway (grudgingly). Local friends walked or took the subway. My parents’ friends from Long Island? Given the choice between an hour drive vs. a two and a half hour trip of driving to the train station, taking the LIRR, taking the subway, and then walking 10-15 minutes, they chose…driving. So did some people from Jersey. Parking was very rough (which we warned them about). I don’t think they’d do it any different if they could do it over again. We are certainly a city of great public transportation, but we’re surrounded by America. And Americans have cars.
To say that everyone attending weddings or other events in Brooklyn can just take public transportation is silly. I can’t see how this won’t lessen the load of on-street parking during events.
I don’t want every other building to be a parking lot, but a hotel makes sense for the area and adequate parking isn’t a bad thing.
Hopefully the final design won’t suck, the scale of the building is reduced somewhat, and it isn’t a construction site for three years.
I don’t remember how my out of town guests got to my wedding, but I’m glad the Montauk Club didn’t have a hideous garage on top.
I agree with you, Bxgrl. These are obviously preliminary sketches to give people an idea of the scale of the building. They’re not real renderings.
“I have friends and relatives in the suburbs and beyond as well, and when they visit, they generally do it by train, which is also how I prefer to get to them.”
People referring a wedding or other major family function, not a casual visit, in which case most people coming from far away would prefer to take cars. Or, indeed, stay over in a hotel.
I thought parking lots were acceptable in the suburbs. And isn’t Brooklyn a suburb of Manhattan.
Speaking of hip-hop concerts at the GHP… when my kid was in MS51, I had a serious rapper working for me, who never quite made it, altho he did manage to get on a couple compilations and shit.
So I was on the PTA on the graduation committee, if I recall, and suggested we bring in this kid, his partner, and his producer to do the music; my daughter, who was singing at the time, and another girl would do backup vocals.
So I rented a limo for everyone, and we pulled up in front of the PGH. Naturally my guys are dressed to the nnes, but hip-hop style, not suits and long dresses like the 51 kids.
One of the dickhead security guards stops us and points to the talent and says, ‘hey, they have to dress better. Don’t you know this is a party?’ I say, sir, this is the talent, they’re rappers, and that’s how rappers dress.’
It was a lot of fun, my friends were attacked at the end of the party by like fifty thirteen year old girls, and da kid had a new set of multi-culti friends for a while.
But I guess my point is I wouldn’t worry about them doing hip-hop anytime soon.
“I have family in Jersey, Upstate New York and Long Island, for instance. If I held an affair at the Grand Prospect, they are coming by car. Period. Taking a cab or mass transit is not a viable option for them..”
Isn’t it? Why not? The places you mention are littered with easily accessible NJTransit, Metro-North, LIRR, and Amtrak stations, each complete with a parking lot. I have friends and relatives in the suburbs and beyond as well, and when they visit, they generally do it by train, which is also how I prefer to get to them. I know the feasibility of this varies depending on your exact location, but I think this car-oriented mindset is just that, a mindset – formed more by habit than actual necessity.