Dutch Kills becomes hotel development hotbed, over residents’ objections

Despite efforts from many residents to restrain commercial development in their neighborhood, the Dutch Kills section of Long Island City has become a hotbed of hotel development, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In Dutch Kills, the 10 hotels the small area boasts will soon be augmented by three more currently under construction, and two more are still in the planning stages, the Journal said. 

“My child isn’t going to be able to talk to someone when she’s walking down the street like I did when I was that age, because it’s a more transient neighborhood now,” Richard Madrid, a lifelong resident of the area, told the Journal.

But because hotel inventory is considered tight citywide, developers continue to push for more development, the paper said. Rooms in the Dutch Kills area are generally between $150 and $250 a night, said Raj Bhagia, a developer later this month will break ground on a 10-story, 74-room hotel on 41st Avenue.

Residents say the city stalled in passing zoning so that more developers could push through their plans.

“We got stuck with all these hotels that ravaged our neighborhood when we never had a high-rise commercial building until 2007,” Megan Friedman, a 30-year resident of the neighborhood, told the Journal. [WSJ] –Guelda Voien