A year after their project met stiff community opposition, a developer’s team returned to Community Board 7 last week to re-pitch their plan to build a small hotel on Webster Avenue in Norwood.  

This time, residents and board members seemed more receptive to McSam Hotel Group’s plan for a five-story, 42-room Comfort Inn, but many, including CB7 Chair Greg Faulkner, remain unconvinced.

"They were more pleasant and responsive," Faulkner said. "But I’m probably leaning toward a ‘no’ vote on the hotel."

McSam doesn’t need approval, however, for the project because Webster is zoned for heavy commercial usage. But the Board can take an advisory vote.

Pat Jones, McSam’s lawyer and spokesman, said the group will not proceed until they get Board approval. That’s why McSam brought out its whole team at CB7’s Land Use Committee meeting, usually a sparsely attended affair.

Jones was joined at the meeting by McSam Chief Operating Officer Gary Wisinski; Dave Martinez, the group’s security consultant; Eldin Villafane, a public relations specialist; and Vince Coppola, a representative from Choice Hotels (the parent company of Comfort Inn).

"I think [the meeting] went well," Jones said. "We will continue to engage the Community Board if it comes back negative."

Jones said they shelved the project because of strong Board opposition last year fueled by support from prominent Bronx elected politicians, including Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion and the Rivera political clan – State Assemblyman and Bronx Democratic boss Jose; his daughter Naomi, also an Assembly member; and his son, Joel, the City Council majority leader.

Accompanied by Deputy Borough President Earl Brown and the Riveras, a group of residents protested the proposed hotel in front of the boarded-up building site between East 201st and 202nd streets on Webster Avenue in August 2006. The narrow site is bookended by an auto shop and a private home.

Opponents fear the hotel will become a "hot sheet motel" or "no-tell motel" that attracts prostitutes and drug dealers.

At the Land Use meeting, Martinez, the security consultant, appeared to stoke the Board’s worst fears when he said the group would ask for extra attention from the 52nd Precinct.   

Community members said area police already had their hands full without worrying about a new hotel in the area that might attract illegal activity. Residents were also concerned that the hotel wouldn’t have security guards.

Opponents doubt the hotel can survive in an area with few amenities, and worried, if it doesn’t, that it would be turned over to the city for use as a homeless shelter.

"It’s basically a non-option" to turn the hotel over, said Coppola, the Choice Hotels rep, adding that both Choice and McSam would face serious financial losses if they abandon the hotel, which is right next to PS/MS 20 and the 52nd Precinct

With a new brand-name hotel in the area, Coppola said, visitors of Fordham University, the Bronx Zoo, New York Botanical Garden or those coming here for family reunions "will now stay in the borough."

Coppola said a feasibility study for the area "came back gangbusters," but admitted those doing the study hadn’t actually spoken to anyone at Fordham, the Zoo, the Garden or anyone else. McSam recently sent letters to several Bronx institutions but has yet to receive responses, Jones said.

Coppola also addressed the "hot sheet" motel issue, saying the Choice Hotels’ computer system simply wouldn’t allow for hourly rentals.

Residents were pleased that the price of an overnight stay would be between $125 and $175 per night, which they said would probably deter a majority of undesirable lodgers.

At the meeting, Jones said McSam had been working with the borough president’s office, but a spokesman for the office said that wasn’t the case. A year ago, Carrion’s office asked McSam for a feasibility and marketing study, a spokesman said, but then didn’t hear from them again until last week, after the Land Use meeting.

"We are in the process of receiving some materials and are hopeful to restart the dialogue started last year, but obviously there are still some concerns," said Mike Murphy, a Carrion spokesman.

"The borough president does support and actively seeks out hotel developments, but only in places that make sense," Murphy said.

Jones pointed to a couple of similar hotels McSam has built in semi-industrial Brooklyn neighborhoods. Those hotels, he said, are running at about an 85 percent occupancy rate. He said a hotel needs to maintain about a 60 percent occupancy rate to be successful.

Faulkner said he just doesn’t see that happening here. There are plenty of other places, he said, even in the northwest Bronx, where a hotel makes more sense.