On the Upper West Side, neighbors say the 92-key Rodeway Inn hotel at 31 West 71st Street is the nexus of crime hitting the tony neighborhood.
Between the park and Columbus Avenue, there have been four felony assaults, three robberies, 13 burglaries, 23 grand larcenies and a homicide since 2006, according to Onboard Informatics.
Earlier this month, a trio of masked men entered the 12-story Rodeway Inn earlier this month, pistol whipped three workers and emptied the safe, taking thousands of dollars. The robbery occurred about three months after an ex-con allegedly raped a woman at the hotel, and less than a year after a homicide was reported at the Rodeway Inn.
The Department of Buildings has issued 59 violations and there have been 52 complaints filed against the hotel since 2005.
“We are very concerned,” an unnamed mother, whose children were walking to school at the time of the incident, told the New York Post, which commissioned the Onboard Informatics report. “It’s An Unsafe Place in a residential neighborhood. It’s no longer just a hotel. Something is going on there … Nobody knows for sure. Some people want to protest.”
Known in the early 1970s as the single-room occupancy Kent Hotel, the city reportedly used it to house welfare recipients, according to reports. The hotel went through several name changes, after the Kent becoming a Comfort Inn, and then the Rodeway Inn in January, according to the Post. Rooms start at $152 per night, according the hotel’s website.
A source told the Post that the hotel is a “bait-and-switch” operation that typically attracts European clientele.
Rodeway Inn declined comment to the Post. [NYP] — Dusica Sue Malesevic