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Austin St.
to get 5-star lodgings
Forest Hills Ledger |
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Drivers searching for elusive parking spaces on Austin Street may get help from an unexpected source: a proposed 15-story luxury hotel which, yes, will bring more traffic but will also include more public parking spaces. Community Board 6 Land Use Vice-chairman Norman Tepper said at last month's meeting that real estate developer The Heskel Group is eyeing a lot at the corner of Austin Street and 70th Road for a 150-room hotel to be completed by late 2008. To sweeten the deal, the developer has offered to open one-third of the spaces to the public at fees equal to municipal parking. Two possible strikes against the proposal are that the block is not zoned to permit such a structure nor does the traffic pattern favor it. The lot is zoned C8-2, which allows for commercial and manufacturing uses but not residential ones. In order to accommodate the hotel, the entire block would likely need to be rezoned C6 to allow the mix of residential and commercial space necessary because, as CB 6 Chairman Joseph C. Hennessy pointed out, the "Department of City Planning doesn't like to spot-zone" individual lots. The city Department of Transportation will need to assess whether 70th Road, currently a one-way street, can be made two-way. City Planning and the DOT did not return calls for comment. And the space is already occupied by an Ann Taylor Loft store and a Blockbuster Video outlet, both of which lease from the Heskel Group. The proposed "green" English Tudor-style building would house restaurants and retail stores on two levels and use solar energy, said Heskel Group owner Heskel Elias. He said he is in negotiations with The Leading Hotels of the World, a five-star chain that owns hotels worldwide. Ann Taylor Loft would get retail space inside the building, but possibly not Blockbuster, Elias said. A hotel would benefit local business, said Leslie Brown, president of the Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce. "Pretty much the No. 1 question we get from people visiting from out-of-town or out-of-state is where can they stay. It's difficult to have to recommend that they stay in places outside Forest Hills, near the airport," Brown said. The hotel would benefit the local economy, bringing more shoppers and diners to the area, she said. Brown said she has arranged a lunch meeting in two weeks for representatives from The Heskel Group, the Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce, the businesses affected by the proposal and local community leaders to discuss the idea. The proposal is a departure from the usual pattern for development on Austin Street, Tepper. "Instead of a developer coming to us with finished plans with all the stamps from city agencies and saying, 'Guess what - I'm doing this,' this is from the bottom up instead of the top down," Tepper said. Reach reporter Alex Christodoulides by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
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