Residents Petition Against Hotel Grand Prospect

Fed up with development plans for a new 11-story hotel on Prospect Avenue, residents have turned to a grassroots tradition: the petition.

Earlier this month members of the South Slope Community Group drafted a petition to deny “the non-contextual expansion” of Grand Prospect Hall, the 150-room hotel with a four-story, 400 spot parking garage that the owners of the Grand Prospect Hall proposed to build on top of their parking lot.

The news was initially at the Jan. 14. Community Board 7 meeting where the proposal was introduced to the public, but an from the residents of one 16th Street condo who charge that the hotel’s construction may affect the quality of life on the block.

Now it seems the resistance has spread beyond the immediate block where the hotel may one day exist.

“The infastructure of this neighborhood is not made to sustain this kind of overdevelopment. This area has been basically raped for the past five or six years. There is proper development and there is over development,” said Bo Samajopolous, a member of the Buildings and Construction Committee at Brooklyn Community Board 7. Samajopolous was among the members of the South Slope Community Group who drafted the petition.

The petition calls for any expansion of Grand Prospect Hall requiring a change in the building code or zoning resolutions be denied. It argues that the size of the proposed hotel is out of context with the rest of the neighborhood.

The petition also argues that the benefits developers Michael and Alice Halkias’ claimed the project would bring to the community – namely 400 parking spaces – will not be beneficial at all. Rather, they claimed the garage will only increase traffic. It also argues that the area will not easily sustain the additional sewage, water usage and noise pollution that they say the hotel will inevitably bring.

Samajopoulos said the hope for the petition is that it will broadcast the community’s thoughts about the project to a wider audience.

“I know the Grand Prospect Hall, I know the owners. It’s a beautiful place. I’ve been saying for years that there is more that can be done with this place, the property is huge. But what they’re proposing is something that is going to hang over the community,” said Samajopolous. “They are entitled to build what they want, but they should do it within the confines of the law.”