This deposed prince got a stay of execution.
The city has paused its plan to auction the troubled Prince Hotel in Bay Ridge after a Brooklyn judge okayed the owner’s court challenge. Landlord Moses Fried has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, so the Sheriff’s Department raided the hotel in February and announced a month later it would sell the joint. Fried did not immediately challenge the city, but now he said he will fight tooth and nail for his property.
“I don’t want to sell it, and I don’t want to auction it,” Fried said. “I am keeping the property — I am dealing with the violations and am preparing plans to straighten everything out.”
The judge-granted stay does not undo the city’s case against Fried, but effectively hits the pause button on its efforts to collect roughly $400,000 in fines for building code, safety, and quality-of-life violations Fried has amassed at the hotel, a sheriff’s department official explained.
To halt the sale, Fried’s lawyers must prove that the city did something wrong when it raided the hotel and moved to sell the property at auction, according to a local councilman, who believes the city will prevail.
“In general, they have to prove the city did it incorrectly,” Councilman Vincent Gentile (D–Bay Ridge) said. “The city is obviously opposing that, and it’ll get resolved.”
The department posted deputies at the 93rd Street hotel near Third Avenue to guard it and collect all revenue coming in at the door a day after Mayor DeBlasio promised action at a Bay Ridge town hall. They have so far collected $52,000, which Fried said he plans to recover. Fried still owns and operates the hotel, but a judge allowed the city to sell the property to the highest bidder to raise money to pay his massive debt. The collections at the door will stop until a judge says otherwise, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.
Locals have long called the hotel a hive of prostitution, drug use, and violence, and someone died of a drug overdose there earlier this month, according to Gentile.
Calls for enforcement intensified last year when the city announced it would build a pre-kindergarten facility on the block.
But Moses claims the coup is politically motivated.
“This is all political,” he said. “There are some politicians who are in business with people, and they want to buy my property. They are pushing all these violations on me — there is a political situation here, but I will overcome it.”
Gentile disagreed.
“I presume the action will go forward,” the lawyer-turned-councilman said.
