Striking a Blow Against Economic Recovery - Mayor de Blasio plans a ban on new hotels.

Late in December 2020, New York City’s Department of City Planning quietly released notice of a public hearing on a proposed zoning amendment that would require a special permit for any new hotel in New York City. This will induce a rush by hotel developers to secure building permits and vest their development rights before the window to do so closes. And then—at the end of 2021, in a city still reeling from recession—tourist accommodation, a major local industry, will be capped in size and permitted to grow only through the illegal conversion of housing units to hotel rooms.

At a moment when the city has many issues, like the recovery of its Central Business Districts (CBDs), and is devastated by the absence of commuters and tourists in the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems crazy to impose a new barrier against commerce. There is surely a vast backlog of travel demand from people who have been stuck at home for a year and are shortly to be vaccinated against the virus. Why wouldn’t the city want to bring in as many tourists as possible?

The mayor is repaying a political debt to a union, the Hotel Trades Council (HTC), at the expense of a city whose future he seems to care little about. The city council will cooperate because it, too, is in the pocket of this politically powerful labor group. The origins of this sad pass in the city’s political history go back to the mid-2000s, when New York City had limited hotel inventory, most of it under union contract. Developer Sam Chang and architect Gene Kaufman noted that the city has a nearly unlimited demand for limited-service hotel rooms. By offering fewer amenities and requiring less staff, limited-service hotel rooms could be offered at a lower price point and vastly expand the New York city tourist market. However, the limited-service model could not be reconciled with the union contract and therefore, new limited-service hotels would of necessity be non-union.

https://www.city-journal.org/de-blasio-plans-ban-on-new-nyc-hotels

statist filth

Striking a Blow Against Economic Recovery - Mayor de Blasio plans a ban on new hotels.

Striking a Blow Against Economic Recovery - Mayor de Blasio plans a ban on new hotels.

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