Developer trades controversial Bay Ridge hotel for affordable housing
Plans for a six-story, 63-unit hotel near an overcrowded Bay Ridge elementary school have morphed into a proposal for a new, nine-story, 95-foot-high building with 45 apartments, including some affordable housing, plus commercial space on the ground floor.
The property, 9114 Fifth Avenue, is across from P.S./I.S. 104 and, aside from parking for the window purveyor next door, has been vacant and on the market at the hands of a Ridge-based seller for nearly a decade.
That all changed in March, 2018, when preliminary plans for a hostelry were filed by the property’s new owner, Ankit Mehta, who came under fire almost immediately for his proposal for the lot, which, residents and politicians argued, would be better suited for a school.