Brooklyn Daily reports that locals in Mill Basin are rallying against a new hotel set to rise in the South Brooklyn neighborhood, citing worry that the hotel will be used as a homeless shelter. The evidence for this argument is flimsy at best.
Queens-based developer Talwinder Parmar is already building the 46-room Comfort Inn on an empty lot at East 49th Street, but due to its odd, admittedly less-than-desirable location between a Department of Sanitation garage and an auto shop, locals are convinced that Parmar actually has a secret plan to contract the space to the city to be used as an emergency homeless shelter, refusing to believe that his intentions are anything other than down right nefarious.
Parmar has dismissed such claims.
"It's not going to be a homeless shelter," he told Brooklyn Daily. "These people are crazy."
Neighbors showed up at a recent community board meeting to protest against construction, where they were joined by local councilman Alan Maisel, who put forward another interesting theory.
"I can only see two possibilities here," he said. "Either he wants to turn it into an hourly, hot-sheet hotel, or he has plans in the future to turn it into a shelter. I don't believe for a minute that he's going to be a good citizen."
Parmar, for his part, insists that the majority of guests in his hotel will simply be travelers coming in and out of JFK airport.
· Inn-side job: Mill Basin locals worry new hotel secretly plans to become homeless shelter [BD]
Loading comments...