LOWER EAST SIDE — Controversial hotelier Hank Freid wants to bring his “exclusive” Times Square rooftop lounge to the top of a Delancey Street Holiday Inn — despite ongoing protests from neighbors.
Months after first opposing plans for the bar atop the hotel at 148-150 Delancey St., protesters are redoubling efforts to stop the venue they fear will flood their block with late-night noise and rowdy crowds.
“It’s kind of frustrating we have to keep [protesting], but at the same time, nothing has really changed,” said Pamela Ito, president of the Suffolk Street Block Association who spearheaded opposition to the rooftop bar the first time around in June.
“It’s still residential, it’s still over an area that's completely oversaturated, what they’re offering isn’t a community service to us and we basically feel like it’s really not needed and it’s not welcome.”
Ito and hundreds of other residents signed a petition in June protesting the bar’s first incarnation — which would have been headed by Joe Donagher and Eamon Donnelly of TriBeCa tavern Barleycorn — arguing that neighboring buildings attached to the inn by a shared courtyard would be subjected to the sounds of late-night revelry drifting from the rooftop.
The hotel also sits directly adjacent to two residences — one on Suffolk Street and one on Clinton Street — which have elderly occupants and families with children, Ito said.
Dozens of incensed neighbors turned up at the bar’s scheduled July hearing before Community Board 3’s State Liquor Authority subcommittee — but the operators themselves never showed up and the subcommittee issued a denial.
But at the end of August, the hotel once again pitched plans for a rooftop venue, this time with hotelier Hank Freid, who wants to use the space to recreate his swanky Haven Rooftop — a lounge offering “modern American cuisine, craft cocktails and cool music” atop Times Square’s Sanctuary Hotel.
Neighbors on Thursday launched a petition against the operation, pointing to Freid’s purported history of misdeeds as a landlord and hotelier.
In 2005, a judge denied Freid a certificate of no harassment following a 36-month inquiry after the Department of Housing Preservation and Development found his employees had used harassment tactics in attempts to evict tenants at 320 E. 11th St, records show.
Freid also landed on a list of New York City’s ‘Worst Landlords’ when he provided housing for homeless individuals with HIV/AIDS in his hotels as part of a government program when the economy was down, then evicted them when it rebounded, according to a 2008 report from the Observer.
The petition, which had gathered 80 of the desired 150 signatures as of Friday morning, asks CB3 to once again oppose the creation of the rooftop haven which would hold two bars, 50 tables, four television screens and background music.
The rooftop would be open until midnight on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays and until 2 a.m. on all other days.
The SLA subcommittee will hear the pitch for the spot at a meeting for hotel applications on Sept. 20 at 6:30 p.m. at 10 Stanton St.
The application for the rooftop bar, on file with the community board, can be viewed here.
The general manager of the Holiday Inn declined to comment.
Freid did not return a request for comment.
