Which got us thinking: how does the Bronx size up on the hotel market compared to the other boroughs?
The Bronx lags behind Brooklyn (40 hotel projects total), Queens (49) and Manhattan (126), but comes out ahead of Staten Island (four).
The hotel industries’ apparent lack of interest in the borough might have something to do with its reputation for seedy lodging. Plans to build a Comfort Inn in 2008 were met with serious opposition from the community based on fears it would turn into a “hot sheet” motel, as the Norwood News reported (the hotel appears to still be under construction, though coming along slowly).
New York Times reporter David Gonzalez also lamented the lack of hotels in his column and, more generally, the lack of a tourism industry in the Bronx. Automobile Club AAA’s New York Tour book listed only one Bronx hotel in its 2008 edition, Gonzalez noted--a Howard Johnson Inn near Yankee Stadium--and failed to list a single Bronx restaurant.
At the time of his article, Gonzalez wrote that the Bronx Tourism Council’s website listed only one hotel under lodgings: Le Refuge Inn, a bed and breakfast on City Island that’s reported to have closed last spring due to zoning issues. Today, the Tourism Council also lists a second bed and breakfast, the Bronx Guest House in Wakefield.
www.yournabe.com/articles/2009/04/23/bronx_times/news/doc49f084540813c389330372.txt
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