When hotel comments do disturb

Even as we were writing a Sunday column about hotel saturation and too many tourists, an announcement popped in about the launch of a new Hampton Inn tower in downtown Brooklyn — boasting a Skyline Terrace event space with “sweeping skyline views.”

My slightly tongue-in cheek column (new inns “threaten to lay waste to the entire city”) drew a torrent of replies. New Yorkers are more passionate, pro and con, about hotel development than we thought.

The most fun response to my premise that new hotels are chewing up neighborhoods and flooding streets with confused tourists came from Tribeca Associates’ Mark Gordon, who heads up a $500 million hotel-development fund: “Really?” He has lots more to say, but we’ll save it for next week.

Among less succinct arguments made by other readers:

“Your article is as uneducated as is illogical … the vast majority of people who go to [Meatpacking District hotel bars] are locals” and if they didn’t like them, “the hotels would go out of business.”

“This is the consequence of a city and society who value money above all else … all development is seen as good even if it means the destruction of the city.”

“As a nearly lifelong resident, I have witnessed the boom in hotels and tourism and can’t shake the feeling that we’re losing our city at an accelerating rate.”

“Wasn’t it people like you who wanted the bums out of the Bowery and the hookers out of Hell’s Kitchen? Now you’ve gotten what you wanted, and the pendulum has swung completely in the opposite direction.”

“New York City’s zoning is to blame — hotels are the only as-of-right residential use in manufacturing districts.”

“You didn’t mention the enormous strain that these new hotels and luxury residential towers sprouting like weeds will place on the Big Apple’s electric power grid and water supply.”