A chic hotel in the heart of Broadway has been quietly operating as a migrant shelter for over a year, The Post has learned, as the Big Apple continues to grapple with the ongoing crisis.
The 141-room Square Hotel at 226 West 50th Street between Eighth Avenue and Broadway is just across from Gershwin Theatre, where the musical “Wicked” is playing.
“To our valued guests: it is with great sadness that we announce the Square Hotel will be closed for the foreseeable future. We appreciate your patronage and hope to welcome you back someday soon,” the Square Hotel says on its Facebook page.
A chic hotel in the heart of Broadway has been quietly operating as a migrant shelter for over a year, The Post has learned.
The hotel’s website says, “Please pardon our appearance as we slip into something new! We look forward to welcoming you in the future.”
The hotel site still boasts a Japanese restaurant and bar in its lobby and “Art Nouveau styled hotel rooms” with “sophisticated furniture, plush beds with down comforters and deluxe linens, flat-screen televisions with cable and C.O. Bigelow toiletries.”
But recent visits to the Square Hotel found a much different scene.
A National Guard soldier is seen stationed at the entrance of the lobby. --->READ MORE HERE
A boutique hotel boasting a 'timeless and sophisticated style' has been quietly turned over to asylum seekers as fears grow over whether New York's tourist market can ever recover.
Visitors logging onto the website for Hotel Le Jolie in Brooklyn are promised 'cutting-edge technology to make your stay comfortable and convenient'.
But the 55-room hotel in upmarket Williamsburg is now among 110 across the city providing emergency shelter to some of the 180,000 migrants who have arrived in New York since the spring of 2022.
And hotel bosses have warned that they will struggle to return rooms currently housing migrants in a fit state for the millions of tourists who keep the economy afloat.
'They're going to need renovations,' said Vijay Dandapani of the Hotel Association of New York City (HANYC). 'It's great news for construction people, but it's not such great news if you're a current hotel owner.'
The city's Department of Homeless Services awarded housing charity St Pauls a $12.3 million emergency contract to housing charity to covert the building into a shelter for migrant families last year, it has emerged.
'They are having St Pauls take over the operation. Nothing functionally changes,' a spource told the New York Post.
Tent cities have sprung up in Floyd Bennett Field, Creedmoor Psychiatric Center and on the grounds of Kennedy Airport in a bid to cope with the migrant surge.
Mayor Eric Adams estimated last year that half the hotels rooms in the city were occupied by migrants in a crisis he warned would 'destroy' New York.
HANYC estimates that 16,000 hotel rooms have been taken off the market to be used as shelters over the past year, and that many will never return to their former use. --->READ MORE HERE
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