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Former Substance Abuse Shelter Sells for $2.7 Million in Rockaway Park

By Katie Honan | June 16, 2015 8:38am
 The former Rockaway Park Hotel, the beige building, sold on June 3, records show.
The former Rockaway Park Hotel, the beige building, sold on June 3, records show.
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DNAinfo/Katie Honan

ROCKAWAY PARK — A former hotel that recently operated as a substance abuse treatment home sold for $2.7 million earlier this month, records show. 

And another former single-room occupancy hotel nearby sold to the same buyers for $1.1 million. 

A recently formed corporation, Beach 116th Street Partners LLC, bought the former substance abuse treatment home on June 3, according to city records.

The four-story building's former owner, Jay Deutchman — who is notorious for operating many single-room occupancies apartments around the city — had purchased the building at 158 Beach 116th St. and an adjacent lot in 2010 for $2.728 million under Beach Far Rockaway Partners LLC, according to records. 

For years he leased the former Rockaway Park Hotel to the Narco Freedom program, which provided lodging for people recently out of jail, prison or a detox program.

Those tenants were flooded out of the building by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and a year later the program's operators told community leaders they planned to put a homeless shelter inside the building, according to reports.

In 2014, high-level sex offenders were living in the shelter, which reopened as a halfway house, reports said, angering locals who hoped for a post-Sandy revitalization of Beach 116th Street.

Another SRO owned by Deutchman, at 154 Beach 114th St., sold to an LLC listed at the same address as the Beach 116th Street Partners LLC for $1.1 million in May, city records.

It's not clear what the new owners will do with both buildings. The LLCs were not listed with a name, and were both registered to a post office box in Lawrence, on Long Island.

Deutchman could not be reached for comment.