Labor Workers, Community Members to Protest East Village Millennial Hotel

EAST VILLAGE, NY — Mayor Bill de Blasio ran on a platform of supporting organized labor and affordable housing, so many in the East Village argue that the latest changes on East 11th Street reek of hypocrisy.

Construction workers, labor unions and activists will team up on Wednesday evening for a protest against the planned East Village Moxy Hotel in place of five historic brownstone buildings on East 11th Street. The brownstones, 112-120 E. 11th St., have been undergoing asbestos abatement for the past two months in preparation for their demolition to make way for a new Moxy Hotel, the Marriott's millennial-targeted franchise.

The hotel is being developed by the Lightstone Group. Dozens of people who lived in a stretch of historic buildings in the East Village were given just a month-and-a-half's notice to leave their homes after Lightstone scooped up the buildings in a $127 million deal. Now the stretch of Old Law Tenement apartments, built between 1887 and 1892, is waiting to be destroyed.

Protesters told Patch at a rally in front of the buildings in August that the CEO of the hotel's developer, David Lichtenstein, has ties to de Blasio that affected the Landmarks Preservation Commission's decision. Lichtenstein is on the board of directors of the mayor's New York City Economic Development Corporation. They think that influenced the LPC's decision to ignore pleas to save the buildings.

Several neighborhood groups wrote a proposal to the LPC two months before the decision to demolish the buildings, asking the LPC to save them. The LPC didn't respond to the letter until the city approved the demolition permits, the groups said. The LPC said it did not believe the buildings were worthy of historic designation, even though it had added them to the eligibility list in 2008, city documents show.

A handful of labor unions and construction workers are joining in on the pushback, furious with Lichtenstein's lack of commitment to organized labor and worker's rights, according to a joint press release from several local organizations.

"In spite of the Mayor's purported commitment to organized labor, the developer has been using companies on the project with a history of wage theft, unsafe practices and mistreatment of workers, and the demolition and construction as well as the planned hotel will use non-union labor," the release said.

Patch will be at the rally Wednesday talking to workers who were tasked with the job of taking the asbestos out of the old buildings before knocking them down to make room for the Moxy. The rally will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the site of the buildings.

Photo Credit: Patch