70 Lefferts Place Now a Hostel
It’s been a rough few years for 70 Lefferts Place, or, more precisely, the developer who’s owned it for the last four and a half years. To refresh, the house traded for $2,400,000 in May 2006 and soon thereafter plans were announced to tear down the Civil War-era gem. A last-minute effort to landmark the…
It’s been a rough few years for 70 Lefferts Place, or, more precisely, the developer who’s owned it for the last four and a half years. To refresh, the house traded for $2,400,000 in May 2006 and soon thereafter plans were announced to tear down the Civil War-era gem. A last-minute effort to landmark the house ended up being successful, with the designation being finalized in December 2006. Within a month, the property was back on the market. It never sold, though, and in April 2009 a Lis Pendens (the first step in the foreclosure process) was filed, revealing that the owner was on the hook for a $2,010,000 loan. We hadn’t heard much about the property since then until a few days ago when a neighbor brought this online listing for a hostel to our attention. According to the website, for $25 a night, you can have a spot in one of the many bunkbeds. The only problem is that this place doesn’t have a C of O for a hotel or even a rooming house, as far as we can tell. We also bet that the lenders would be curious to know how much the owner is renting out the place to the hostel operators for.
I don’t see what the neighbors have to complain about. A bunch of kids from Oslo and Munich, in town for a couple of nights, are hardly the Wild Bunch. Nor are they even taking up parking spaces. What’s the big deal?
I actually do live on this block and think having a hostel on my street is a good thing. I agree with many posters here that I’d much rather see this building have life inside it then see it get foreclosed. I’ll take the devil I know over the countless scary possibilities of what could happen here. The international travelers who stay at this place seem to enjoy the neighborhood and definitely help support our local coffee shops and restaurants. All plusses in my book. I find this a good use for a beautiful structure and hope that they thrive in this incarnation.
OK, what jessi & MM said make sense. The ends may justify the apparently illegal means
Sounds like a good use for the place, since no other takers have emerged. A hostel means that the house is kept up, as are the grounds, and the sidewalks get shoveled. It’s got a cheery paint job, and tangentally is helping people discover an area of Brooklyn that they never would have seen on the tour bus.
I don’t know much about hostels, besides general info, but with social media being as important as it is now, if this place was in anyway unsafe, or dirty or otherwise not cool, the word would get out, and they’d be closed in a hot minute from lack of patrons. So they must be doing many things right.
I prefer this to an empty, boarded up and deteriorating historic landmark.
“Everything in this boro is done half legal.”
There’s a continuum…..I think most people don’t think having a hostel on their street is a good thing.
There’s a big difference between this and trying to do some work on your house without permits.
Yeah, and telling on this guy could lead to a foreclosure – probably not good for future condition of the house.
The snark-strike was an outing of something with a needless set of negative closing barbs that will inevitably cause the proprietors grief all for the benefit of web hits.
Everything in this boro is done half legal. Why punch that up?
Take a look at http://brooklynbased.net/blog/indie-publishers-jeff-stark-of-nonsense-nyc/ where a listings maestro bemoans the clamp down on everything mentality that cripples creativity and fun.
FYI: I have no skin in this game except wanting to have good things in my boro.
“he price, the friendly staff, the cleanliness even if there are cats, but i like them ;)got offered free toast, nutella and water at my stay”
one of the reviews.
They have cats!
AND Nutella!
They should get a free pass in my book.
“The Guesthouse features five 6 bed dorms, 3 lunges with TV, 2 kitchens with cooking facilities, lookers, FREE public computer, FREE WIFI and FREE Phone.”
They need spell check.