Courtesy Hotel closes, West Hempstead celebrates

The Courtesy Hotel appears to have closed its doors — at least for now.

On the morning of Dec. 5, a sign, with misspellings in two languages, was posted on the front doors of the notoriously crime-ridden West Hempstead hotel, reading “Closed for buisness. Cerado.”

At around 9:30 a.m., police patrolling the area were heard over a police scanner telling their dispatcher, “It looks like the Courtesy Hotel is officially closed.”

A quick drive through the hotel parking lot revealed that it was, indeed, shuttered. By Dec. 10, its first-floor windows and front entrance were boarded up.

Tom Levin, the lawyer representing Courtesy owner Bruce Zwelsky, confirmed only that the hotel was temporarily closed. He said that was all the information he was authorized to divulge as of press time.

Closing on the property was expected to occur by mid-January, according to Maria Rigopoulos, regional vice president of Mill Creek Residential, the company preparing to purchase the property, demolish the building and construct in its place a four-story complex featuring market-rate rental apartments.

“The temporary-closing designation is to put into perspective the requirement that the sale of the hotel must occur within a set time period,” said Rosalie Norton, president of the West Hempstead Community Support Association and a leader in the fight to shut down the hotel. “If the sale, for whatever reasons, should not occur, then the hotel would most likely reopen for business. This possibility is highly unlikely given the desire of both parties [to close on the property], in that the owner wants to sell and that Mill Creek Residential Trust wants to buy the hotel and construct the apartment complex.”

Norton said she expects the temporary closing to reduce crime in the area. “Virtually all of the criminal activity occurring was within the hotel itself,” she said. “Since the entranceway and the first-floor windows are boarded up, this would certainly eliminate any crimes being committed in the hotel itself.”

Still, the Nassau County Police Department said it would continue to monitor the hotel and patrol the surrounding area. “Even though it’s closed, we still have to keep our patrols in the area because, usually when a building is vacated and boarded up, you have to worry about people going in and possibly trying to live there illegally, possibly going in and stealing things such as copper piping and things of that nature,” said Det. Lt. Kevin Smith, commanding officer of the NCPD’s office of public information. “So we still have to keep a presence in that area and be vigilant about what goes on in and around that area.”

The Police Department, like West Hempstead residents, hopes the sale will offer hope to the community by, if nothing else, reducing crime there. “We hope that if it’s going to be sold, it’s sold to a responsible business owner who decides to put some kind of constructive and good business in place that the community can embrace,” Smith said. “It sounds like if [Mill Creek Residential is] going to level the ground and put in its place a community-type setting, we would imagine that it would be an area of responsible people [and] hopefully a low-crime area.”

Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray said town officials and community members are excited about the hotel’s closure and the plans for the Mill Creek complex, which is to be called the Alexan at West Hempstead Station.

“I would like to thank Rosalie Norton, the West Hempstead community and my colleagues on the town board — Ed Ambrosino, Jim Darcy and Dorothy Goosby — for working with me to remove this blight from the community,” Murray said in a statement. “We are all looking forward to the arrival of the proposed residential complex that will be both beautiful and commuter friendly. … We are all looking forward to the apartments that will replace the hotel.”