Vacant Hampton Inn in Jericho could become an NYIT student dorm
A former Hampton Inn at 120 Jericho Turnpike which NYIT would like to turn into student housing. Credit: Corey Sipkin
A vacant Hampton Inn in Jericho would become a dormitory for NYIT students under a $15.1 million proposal, two years after plans for a homeless shelter on the site were scuttled, officials said.
Developer Michael F. Puntillo wants to buy the 53,000-square-foot hotel for $14.5 million. Other projected costs include $250,000 in renovations before the college students move in next year. Between 160 and 200 adults, all of them “pursuing professional degrees,” would live in the building, he said on Tuesday.
“These aren’t your typical college freshmen,” Puntillo said, adding the dorm residents would be good neighbors. “These students are very serious about becoming licensed professionals in medicine, architecture and engineering.”
He said he's in lease negotiations with New York Institute of Technology.
Barbara J. Holahan, the college's chief financial officer and treasurer, said many of its graduate students aren’t from the metropolitan area and therefore need a place to stay.
NYIT’s Old Westbury campus doesn’t have dorms, though before coronavirus struck, the college provided student housing on the SUNY Old Westbury campus for more than a dozen years. Since 2021, NYIT has rented rooms for some of its 2,500 students in area hotels.
The developer's proposal would allow the college "to run our own housing operation,” Holahan told a meeting of the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency. “So, we can run activities for the students and manage their transportation back and forth from campus.”
The developer has requested tax breaks from the IDA, including 20 years of property tax savings. The property tax bill is now $340,197, according to the aid application.
The IDA board last week voted unanimously to begin negotiations with the developer.
IDA chairman Richard Kessel said, “This project is going to open up opportunities for students to be able to attend NYIT and to find a place to live, which is not easy on Long Island.”
He and others noted that another development company, 120 Westend LLC, proposed to make the hotel into a homeless shelter two years ago. The shelter would have provided transitional housing to homeless families who were staying in three nearby hotels, according to then-Nassau County Executive Laura Curran.
The planned shelter was opposed by the activist group Concerned Jericho Parents, members of the county legislature and Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino. The shelter was scuttled after the town won a temporary restraining order from a State Supreme Court judge in August 2020.
Saladino said on Tuesday, “While no building application has yet been filed with the town, we are happy to learn that the private sector is putting forth potential uses for the site other than a homeless shelter, which was not the right use for this residential community. We look forward to receiving community input on the proposed project,” he said.
The 80-room Hampton Inn opened in 2009 in a building that had long been home to a Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge.
The latter received notoriety in November 1974, when pop singer Connie Francis was raped by a knife-wielding intruder in her hotel room after performing at the then-Westbury Music Fair. She stopped singing publicly for seven years before resuming her career with another performance at the Westbury venue, according to the Newsday archives.
The assailant was never identified or apprehended. But Francis sued Howard Johnson’s for failing to provide adequate security and won a $1.5 million settlement, the archives show.
James T. Madore writes about Long Island business news including the economy, development, and the relationship between government and business. He previously served as Albany bureau chief.
