Mayor Bill de Blasio’s planning department is moving forward with a “dangerous” proposal pushed by a union backer that would stifle hotel development — a goal he has continued to seek while also attempting to revive the city’s economy and tourism industry after the sector was decimated by the pandemic.

The measure — which would require developers to obtain special permission throughout the city, regardless of zoning, to build new hotels — has for years been a main objective of the Hotel Trades Council, a longtime political ally of the de Blasio that supported his ill-fated presidential bid.

“This proposal is New York City’s big F-you to the rest of the world, saying, ‘Don’t come here,’” architect Gene Kauffman fumed Wednesday at a hearing on the hotel building barrier.

“It will cripple Broadway, restaurants, stores and other businesses that will be unable to return to their former levels,” Kauffman said.

The restriction, which would be codified in the form of a text amendment to the zoning code, requires builders to go through a lengthy and expensive public approval process called the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which requires a green light from the City Council, a traditionally labor-friendly and increasingly development-skeptical body.

Applying the special permitting restriction for new hotels in the five boroughs would keep tourists and business travelers from returning, hamstringing the Big Apple’s hospitality rebound, critics of the potential move say. 

A Real Estate Board of New York representative blasted the proposal, citing a harrowing study that projected the hotel hurdle would cause a loss of 75,000 permanent jobs — and the creation of hotels to lag behind the soon-to-increase demand for them. Additionally, the city would lose about $10 billion in economic activity in non-hotel spending in the next 15 years due to reduced tourism and reducing tax revenue, the real estate group’s executive said.

“The text amendment would stifle multiple industries that have brought jobs, revenue, and growth opportunities to all five boroughs,” Basha Gerhards, the large owner and builder lobby’s senior vice president of Planning, said at Wednesday’s City Planning Commission hearing.

“The City Planning Commission should disapprove of this action, or if it intends to move forward, significantly scale back the scope of this dangerous action so that it applies only to the extent that facts – supported by careful analysis – so warrant.”

Paul Selver, a land use lawyer at white-shoe firm Kramer Levin, said the text amendment the City Planning Commission is mulling over “does not serve a legitimate planning purpose.”

“It is not a process that should be used for hotel,” he said. “It should not be put into place for hotel development, because it will, in fact, basically stop hotel development.”

But proponents of implementing the hotel obstacle citywide — a requirement that has been implemented in parts of the city — say it gives New Yorkers a chance to push back against potentially unwanted hotels.

“I believe that special permits for hotels is a smart policy. It gives New Yorkers a say where they currently don’t have any at all,” said Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who represents Bay Ridge. “My district needs many things, but I never had someone suggest that what we really need are more hotels.”

“We want New Yorkers to have more of a say over what happened in their communities, and not less.”

Despite criticism from some business and real estate leaders, the likely next mayor Eric Adams, currently the Brooklyn borough president, maintains his support for the “smart” move.

“Over the past few years, we have seen an over-proliferation of hotels around New York City that are not fulfilling their obligations as good neighbors to local residents,” Adams said Wednesday in a prepared statement. “We need a fair process that allows for input from local stakeholders and City leaders to ensure that new hotels serve the community, and won’t undermine quality-of-life or public safety for the surrounding community.

“Requiring public review of new hotels via a special permit is a smart way to promote the interests of New York City residents, tourists, and workers.” 

The de Blasio planning department has included hotel special permit requirement in neighborhoods rezoned under his mayoralty, such as Midtown East, the Garment District, and Inwood. In 2018, the City Planning Commission and Council rubber stamped a proposal to require a special permit for hotels in areas zoned for light manufacturing.

If passed by the Planning Commission and City Council, there would be no as-of-right hotel construction in the city, meaning for each new hotel, the developer would be required to apply for permission from City Hall and Council, no matter the zoning in the lot where they want to build.

This process is a theoretical one, when it comes to hotels, as the special permitting requirement has not yet yielded a hotel. Zero hotels have been approved and subsequently constructed in areas where a special permit is needed to build one, according to the Department of City Planning.

Just one developer — the potential builders of Project Commodore at 175 Park Ave — has applied for a special permit in areas where special permitting has been applied, an agency spokesperson said Wednesday. That project is still in the community board consulting process.

Ahead of the hearing, a former spokesman for the city’s planning body ripped the hotel special permitting text ammendment, calling it an “ill-conceived” idea that would tarnish de Blasio’s legacy.

“The hotel special permit is as ill-conceived as the mayor’s presidential run and far more damaging,” said the former spokeswoman Rachaele Raynoff in a tweet.

“If this passes as proposed, he will be remembered not for universal pre-K, but for stunting an industry that employs tens of thousands and is an economic engine for the city,” she said.

De Blasio has defended himself against accusations he’s advanced the development curtailment out of fealty to an allied union in the Hotel Trades Council — members of which gave him 70 percent of his donations during the mayor’s 2020 Democratic presidential campaign after endorsing him in June 2019.

He has insisted his planning department is moving forward with the hotel regulation since “community input makes sense.”

“If you look over the years at community concerns about different development, different facilities, hotels have always been one of the things that really concern people, because it brings a lot more activity,” de Blasio said during an April 28 virtual press briefing.

“And most hotels we’re talking about, a lot of activity of one kind, some hotels it means a different kind, but either way you slice it, there’s been real community concern about the impact, the traffic, parking, whatever it may be.”

Additional reporting by Nolan Hicks and Nicholas Conca