After 2 Shootings, A Hotel In Kew Gardens Comes Under Scrutiny

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — Parties and loud music. Hard drugs and prostitutes. Fights, assaults and shootings.

Neighbors and local politicians say the Umbrella Hotel on Queens Boulevard has been a hotspot for all of the above, even as officials urge New Yorkers to avoid large social gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Police arrested suspects in two of four violent incidents that have unfolded at the Kew Gardens hotel in the last six weeks, according to a spokesperson, but some stakeholders told Patch that they fear the parties will rage on unless the city intervenes.

Those concerns spurred an all-hands-on-deck meeting Thursday at Queens Borough Hall, but the city agencies that could crack down on the hotel and its guests were no-shows, attendees told Patch.

No representatives from the Department of Health, the Department of Consumer Affairs, the FDNY or the Mayor Office's of Special Enforcement attended, according to state Assembly Member Dan Rosenthal, who was at the meeting.

Neither did the Umbrella Hotel's manager. The hotel did not respond to a request for comment.

"They don’t care about the community they are in," Rosenthal said of the hotel. "They care more about money than the community safety.”

NYPD officers told attendees that there is only so much they can do without enforcement assistance from other city agencies, whose officials have so far refused requests to step in out of concerns for their safety, according to one person at the meeting who asked that their name not be used. Police have since offered to escort them.

The violence includes shootings on July 3 and Aug. 9 and two domestic assaults, according to NYPD Sergeant Mary Frances O’Donnell, a department spokesperson.

A 15-year-old boy was arrested in connection with the first shooting and faces charges of second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment. The teen's name was not released due to his age, but police said he has previously been convicted of a weapons charge.

Police said no one has been arrested for the second shooting, which left bullet holes in the hotel's revolving front door.

The victims in the two shootings survived, according to the Queens Daily Eagle.

The NYPD also received reports of assaults at the hotel on July 22 and Aug. 9, the same day as the second shooting, the spokesperson said.

Five Queens officials have since written to Mayor Bill de Blasio to ask for help coordinating a response to the bedlam, the Queens Daily Eagle reported on Monday.

"It's just not tolerable," Ethan Felder, a Democratic district leader in the neighborhood, told Patch in a phone interview. “Someone could get killed.”