Midtown eyesore turns into homeless magnet — thanks to Mamdani’s apathy

The burgeoning encampment spreading along Manhattan’s West Side has become a symbol of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wrongheaded homelessness policies — and nine blocks east, a mini-Skid Row in Midtown is sad evidence of his economic neglect.

Under the scaffold surrounding the shuttered Roosevelt Hotel, on a prime block just steps from Grand Central Terminal, two or more homeless people have taken up residence this month, storing their belongings — dozens of stuffed-full garbage bags and two shopping trolleys — along the facade.  

Neighbors have made at least 14 calls about the encampment to 311 since early July. 

Fred Cerullo, president of the Grand Central Partnership business-improvement district, said the repeated attempts at agency outreach have had no effect.

“None of this shows compassion for the individuals who are clearly in need of assistance,” Cerullo told me, “and it also creates a quality-of-life nightmare, with 20 to 30 bags along the sidewalks.”

It’s a blight on an economically booming neighborhood — and it highlights the beautiful old building’s needlessly sorry state. 

The Roosevelt, built in 1924, is a classic railway hotel.

The 19-story edifice, spanning a city block, is part of the original Terminal City, the mini-metropolis built around Grand Central a century ago to serve commuters and long-distance travelers.  

As the real-estate plots around it become a mono-crop of glass towers, the Roosevelt’s crisp stone window borders, neat brickwork and mock-serious statuary flourishes are even more unique, and thus more valuable. 

It holds a special place in entertainment and political lore: Guy Lombardo’s orchestra called it home for three decades, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey crowed “victory” over President Harry Truman there, and it’s featured in classic movies like “Wall Street” and “The French Connection.”

Yet the city is letting it molder.  

To see how a well-run old hotel fits well into a modern urban environment, consider Chicago.  

The Windy City’s downtown Palmer House is a similar stone-and-brick complement to the glass towers that now surround it.  

Like the Roosevelt, the Palmer shut down for more than a year during the COVID-19 pandemic — but it used that time to renovate.

That bet paid off: Its 1,641 rooms were sold out throughout the July 4th weekend, with hundreds of guests and visitors eating and drinking in the block-through lobby restaurant. 

The activity generated by the Palmer creates a positive effect on surrounding streets, adding thousands more people to the neighborhood each week with money to spend.  

It’s a depressing contrast to the Roosevelt, which the city has abused since the hotel’s own 2020 pandemic closure. 

In 2023, Mayor Eric Adams signed a contract with the hotel’s owner, state-owned Pakistan International Airlines, to use its 1,025 rooms as a migrant shelter.  

Since Adams ended that deal last year, the Roosevelt has remained empty, metal bars obstructing its lobby. 

It’s now surrounded by scaffolding, festooned here and there with World Cup flags.

The building’s east side, fronting on Vanderbilt Avenue, has been scrawled in graffiti for years. 

The hotel has 79 active violations with the city’s Buildings Department and owes a quarter-million dollars in fines. 

It’s not landmarked, despite several attempts — and although the Trump administration earlier this year  touted a mysterious agreement with Pakistan to redevelop the site, its future remains uncertain.  

After such willful neglect, it’s no surprise that vagrants are drifting in.  

The best way to crowd out anti-social uses is with social uses — that is, by getting this historic building back into circulation, pronto.  

It needs renovations, true, but a bunch of key interests can align here.  

First, basic economics: Gotham needs more hotels, particularly in core Manhattan.

As analysts at CoStar report, the city has boasted the highest occupancy rate of all of this year’s World Cup cities — often above 90% — and even before the tournament, rates have broken records.  

The Roosevelt still maintains some retail tenants, from a pizza store to clothiers, showing how stubbornly New York wants to thrive. 

Then, union voters: The revenues possible in core Manhattan would make it possible to keep running the Roosevelt as a union hotel, especially if a giant such as Hilton or Marriott were to run it efficiently. 

Satisfying the unions is another key Mamdani interest.  

And it will please preservationists.

“The Roosevelt Hotel is an elegant and urbane building by noted architect George B. Post” — he also built the original New York Stock Exchange building — “that deserves landmark status,” says Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy.  

Mamdani still hasn’t figured out how to put his Economic Development Corporation to use — apart, of course, from handling his city-funded grocery-store boondoggle.  

Cobbling together a Roosevelt deal that satisfies the owner, the hotel union and nearby businesses would be a worthy project. 

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.