Development in Brownsville is starting to pick up, and it might have something to do with the big rezoning set to transform East New York next door. Today we’ve come across plans for a seven-story hotel at 120 Thatford Avenue, between Pitkin and Belmont avenues.
The seven-story building would rise on a block situated between two sprawling housing projects, Howard Houses and Brownsville Houses. It’s not the greatest location for a budget hotel, but the neighborhood has decent retail options, grocery stores, and a handful of small parks. Future travellers would be able to walk to the L train at Sutter Avenue, roughly seven blocks away.
The hotel would have 53 rooms and only 17,643 square feet of space, for rooms averaging 330 square feet.
The developer is Cedarhurst, N.Y.-based Amritpal Sandhu, and Jamaica-based architect Manish Savani applied for the permits.
This area is zoned for mixed-use residential development, and we expect this project would be apartments if the 421-a tax abatement program hadn’t expired. A different developer filed plans last summer for a 23-unit residential building next door, and the DOB approved building permits in December. Without the tax break, new residential development simply isn’t possible in Brownsville unless the city offers large subsidies.
Both the residential and hotel sites once belonged to fishmonger M. Slavin and Sons, one of the city’s largest and oldest seafood wholesalers. The company unloaded several properties on Thatford Avenue back in 2011 for the bargain basement price of $659,262. The firm declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier that year, after paying out $900,000 to settle a racial and sexual discrimination lawsuit with several former employees.
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This is just what our neighborhood needs!
They got hotels at Rockaway & Sutter and Pitkin & Chester. For the adventurous folk, they got one at Linden & Van Sinderen.
“It’s not the greatest location for a budget hotel, but the neighborhood has decent retail options, grocery stores, and a handful of small parks” –That’s not going to sell it!
“Future travelers would be able to walk to the L train at Sutter Avenue, roughly seven blocks away” –That’ll be a lovely walk for future travelers. Good luck with that! That’s not safe during daylight hours.