Judge to decide on sale of Prince Hotel

Bay Ridge spot source of community outrage

September 2, 2016 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Bay Ridge residents are waiting to hear what a judge will say about the future of the infamous Prince Hotel. Eagle file photo by Paula Katinas

Share this:

The future of the Prince Hotel, one of the most notorious spots in Bay Ridge, will soon be decided, but it’s not clear what will ultimately happen to the building that for so long has been the source of outrage and complaints in the community.

Brooklyndaily.com reported on Sept. 1 that a judge will rule this month whether the de Blasio administration can move ahead with plans to sell the infamous hotel at auction or whether to give the building’s owner a second chance to fix the place up.

Department of Finance (DOF) records list Bay Ridge Prince LLC as the property owner of the hotel, which is located at 315 93rd St.

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

Mayor Bill de Blasio came to Bay Ridge for a town hall meeting on Feb. 16 and promised hundreds of residents 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 at the time.

Twenty-four hours after the mayor’s bold declaration, sheriffs raided the Prince Hotel.

Dozens of deputies from the Brooklyn Sheriff’s Office descended on the Prince Hotel on the night of Feb. 17 to enforce 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 violations ran the gamut from illegally operating a transient hotel to failure to install an adequate number of sprinklers. There were 71 outstanding building code violations on record against the Prince Hotel, according to Beckmann, who keeps a thick folder of paperwork in her office on the violations amassed by the hotel over the years.

In the wake of the raid of the notorious hotel, the DOF sought to force the sale of the building to pay off the debts that the hotel’s owner owed.

The auction was set to take place on June 8, but the building owner went to court to try to prevent the sale. The owner convinced a judge to stop the sale and promised the court that the hotel’s problems would be addressed, brooklyndaily.com reported.

Concerns over the Prince Hotel increased when it was revealed in 2015 that the School Construction Authority planned 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.

Councilmember Vincent Gentile (D-Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights-Bensonhurst), who had been pushing the city to take action at the Prince Hotel, remained hopeful that the hotel would be sold.

“With a pre-K in construction less than 500 feet away, an infamous site for debauchery shouldn’t be next door,” Gentile wrote on his Twitter account last week.