Local pols ‘pleased’ that Prince Hotel is up for auction June 8

Gentile: ‘Prince Has Been an Albatross; Nobody Will Be Sorry to See it Go’

March 25, 2016 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Councilmember Vincent Gentile said he is pleased the hotel is being sold. Eagle file photo by Paula Katinas

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Bay Ridge’s elected officials could hardly contain their glee at the news that a fleabag hotel that one lawmaker called “an albatross around the area’s quality of life,” will soon be changing owners.

The Prince Hotel at 315 93rd St., which came to the attention of Mayor Bill de Blasio when Community Board 10 Vice Chairman Doris Cruz implored him at a town hall last month to do something to get rid of the drug dealers and vagrants congregating there, is going to be sold at an auction by order of the city.

The auction will take place on June 8 at the Kings County Sheriff’s Office, 210 Joralemon St., Room 909, at 1 p.m.

The city will accept cash only for the hotel, according to the sale notice.

The New York City Department of Finance had been seeking to force the sale of the building ever since the place was raided on Feb. 17, the night after a town hall at Fort Hamilton High School at which de Blasio vowed to take action.

“I think I speak for the entire community by saying how pleased I am that the sale process for the Prince Hotel is moving forward,” Councilmember Vincent Gentile (D-Bay Ridge) said in a statement. “The Prince has been an albatross around the neck of the area’s quality of life for far too long so nobody will be sorry to see it go.”

The sale will be conducted to pay off the debts that the hotel’s owner, Bay Ridge Prince LLC, owes the city from hundreds of thousands of dollars in violations the building has been hit with over the past 21 years, officials said.

The hotel has been the target of complaints from Bay Ridge residents for decades.

Residents of 93rd Street and people living on surrounding blocks charged that the place is a flophouse and that drug use, prostitution and violent incidents are frequent occurrences there.

The mayor promised hundreds of residents at the town hall that he would crack down on the hotel. “I find the situation with the Prince Hotel unacceptable. I’m not going to stand for it. There will be enforcement at the Prince Hotel,” de Blasio said.

Twenty-four hours after the mayor’s declaration, dozens of deputies from the Sheriff’s Office descended on the Prince Hotel to start enforcing outstanding violations that the building owner had been hit with and never paid, officials said.

“The building has over $400,000 in outstanding judgments resulting from this property owner who has failed to satisfy violations from 1995 to the present,” Community Board 10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann told the Brooklyn Eagle the day after the raid.

There are 71 outstanding building code violations on record against the Prince Hotel, according to Beckmann.

Concerns over the Prince Hotel increased when it was revealed last year that the New York City School Construction Authority plans to build a pre-K center on the same block. The pre-K center, to be built at 369 93rd St., is scheduled to open in September of 2017.