There’s lots to do on Jerome Avenue between East 174th Street and the on-ramp to the Cross Bronx Expressway. You can get your car windows tinted. You can purchase a used police cruiser. You can pimp out your rims. You can have a chicken, rabbit or rooster slaughtered, plucked, skinned and trussed. You can time how frequently the No. 4 train roars by on the tracks above. But if you’re worn out after all that activity, there’s no place to rest your head.
Prakashkumar Patel wants to change that. “They need a good hotel in the Bronx,” said Patel, who owns Marriotts, Hampton Inns and other chain hotels in Albany, on Long Island and near LaGuardia Airport. He purchased and demolished a car repair shop — one of many on the strip — at number 1665. And he plans to build a brick and granite Comfort Inn, complete with breakfast and meeting rooms and a parking lot in the rear. “It will bring up the value of the whole area,” he said.
Local leaders disagree.
