Migrants being bused from Texas to New York City soon will be housed in a luxury midtown Manhattan hotel, the New York Post reported.
Mayor Eric Adams plans to convert the Row NYC, located in pricey tourist-packed Times Square, into a shelter for as many as 600 migrant families, three sources told the Post.
"In a month or two, we're about to open up for DHS [the city Department of Homeless Services], for homeless," a hotel staffer told the Post on Monday. "They're working on an agreement, a contract. … It'll be here at this hotel, but they'll keep the DHS shelter on a certain floor. But that hasn't started yet, they said a month or two."
The city's plan was fast-tracked after DHS quietly issued a desperate request for proposals last week, sources told the Post.
"The population served by the selected vendor will be families with children, adult couples and individual adults," according DHS' Aug. 4 solicitation, the Post reported.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott announced Aug. 5 that the first bus headed to New York with migrants from the southern border had arrived in the Big Apple.
Row NYC is a 28-story, 1,300-room building located about three blocks north of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where buses are dropping off the migrants.
Three days later, Adams said his city's "goal is every asylum seeker that comes to New York, we are going to give them shelter and support that they need."
That apparently will include Row NYC, formerly known as the Milford Plaza and once promoted as the "Lullaby of Broadway."
The daily weekday rate for a standard room with one full or queen bed in mid-September, when the hotel could begin housing migrants, ranges from $414.42 to $435.07 per night. A one-bedroom "executive suite" goes for a non-refundable nightly rate of $724.24.
The hotel's Internet lounge offers six iMac computers that provide 30 minutes of access. There's also a fitness center with treadmills, elliptical machines, recumbent bicycles, and free weights.
Adams' office hasn't provided details on the hotel plan, such as who will oversee it, or what it might cost, the Post said.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration spent nearly $300 million to put up those without housing in such hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A city hall official told the Post that New York had extended the deadline for receiving bids from entities interested in operating the hotel undertaking to Wednesday.
Some guests told the Post they would return to the hotel if migrants also were staying there, but other guests disagreed.
"I wouldn't come back to this hotel if there were migrants staying here," hotel guest David Carpenter, 74, a tourist from Tennessee, told the Post. "If they secured the border like they should, the migrants wouldn't be here in the first place."
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