NEW YORK (PIX11) — It’s a hotel that’s nearly a century old, and has been featured in more than a dozen movies and television series, including “Wall Street” and “Mad Men.”
Now, after being shuttered since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Roosevelt Hotel is set to reopen within days to serve as an intake center and housing for migrants from the southern border.
The change was announced by Mayor Eric Adams in a press release from his office early on Saturday evening. It said that the Roosevelt, on 45th Street and Madison Avenue near Grand Central Terminal, will be the “first asylum seeker arrival center” in the city, as well as “the city’s ninth Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center, as hundreds of asylum seekers continue to arrive in New York City each day.”
The facility will serve as “a centralized intake center for all arriving asylum seekers and providing migrants with access to a range of legal, medical, and reconnection services, as well as placement, if needed, in a shelter or humanitarian relief center,” the release went on to say.
It also said that the hotel “will open up 175 rooms for children and families, until it is scaled to approximately 850 rooms. An additional 100 to 150 rooms will be held for asylum seekers in transition to other locations.”
The 175 rooms will be available for migrant families “beginning later this week,” according to the city.
The doorman at the Roosevelt for 23 years, who gave only his first name, Sal, told PIX11 News that after “the hotel was closed for three years,” to have the city reopen it for asylum and migrant purposes, “Then so be it.”
“Would I like to come back, of course,” Sal said about the prospect of the hotel reopening. “Under these circumstances, unfortunately, it’s different … It’s not the same feeling.”
He did say that he will return as doorman for 90 days, now that the hotel is going to be open again.
The reopening news came around the same time on Saturday that State Assemblymember Sam Pirrozolo tweeted that the mayor had informed him that the abandoned Hungerford School on Staten Island will house 300 migrants.
That news came a day after P.S. 188 in Coney Island was notified that its gym may be used as a sheltering site. Also, on Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul sent a letter to President Joe Biden calling on the federal government to use federally controlled spaces in New York City. In her letter, she named Floyd Bennett Field specifically.
On Saturday, Brooklyn resident Ruby Duncan was visiting the 1,000-acre facility, which is part of the federal Gateway National Recreation Area.
“No one can stay here as an asylum seeker,” she said. “It’s not designed for someone to live.”
