ROW NYC, the once-infamous Manhattan migrant hotel that was a shelter site for nearly three years, quietly reopened to tourists last week.
Fresh flowers beautified the front and wheelie suitcases crowded the lobby on Friday as the 1,300-room Midtown property was back offering “modern” rooms and “inviting” stays for a few hundred bucks a night.
“When they said that they reopened today I was wondering what are the things they did to fix it because it looks good,” said guest Efrain Santiago, 50.
“The room is really clean and neat. I’m on the 24th floor with a great view. The employees and manager have been great to us,” added Santiago, who is visiting from Puerto Rico.
The glossy reboot includes Percy All Day, a new 90‑seat bar and café that stretches along the lobby, offering espresso and croissants in the morning and cocktails and small plates at night.
A retail nook called “nyce things” sells logo caps, totes and other New York themed merch.
But some visitors still found signs of wear and tear.
“I was a little concerned about the elevator because it looks like there were wires leaking out of the bottom,” said Serena Villa, 28, visiting from Austin. “There was a gap and there are exposed wires coming out of it. I was like, that should not be there.”
Villa, who found the hotel listed on Airbnb and paid about $300 per night, said that “most of it’s pretty, the lobby looks really cozy,” and that staff seemed especially attentive.
“They definitely told employees to mind their P’s and Q’s because everyone is being really nice,” she said.
Other guests noticed that some areas of the hotel were still roped off and under construction.
Lauren Holland, 31, and Alyssa Davis, 31, visiting from Kentucky, accidentally ended up on the hotel’s second floor, which is not open yet.
“It was just really dirty and pretty torn up,” Holland said. “The walls were white and had polka dots on them, like stickers stuck on the wall.”
Tony Machado, Senior Vice President and Head of Design at Highgate, said the damage to the hotel after serving as a shelter for years was typical of “family living.”
Machado said construction is ongoing as the hotel takes a “phased approach,” reopening floor by floor with about 300 rooms finished so far.
He said workers have installed new carpet, new wall finishes, new lighting, new paint, new artwork, new signage, new room numbers, new mattresses, new sheets, new furniture and put new sinks, faucets and mirrors in the bathrooms.
“I feel like in a lot of ways we’re giving back to the city by reimagining this hotel,” Machado said.
For longtime neighborhood workers, the transformation is stark.
William Brownstein, 63, who has spent the last decade selling tickets to a nearby comedy show, said he watched the hotel before, during and after its shelter years.
“It was not pretty because I remember the old hotel,” Brownstein said of the period when the hotel was a notorious migrant den.
He recalled “a lot of pot smoking” and small unattended children lining the block.
“It was disgusting. Not them, but they hang out in the middle of the street, they had a million bikes there. Little kids at night, I’m talking three-or four-years-old, sitting on the curb,” he said. “This area has a lot of charm, but it was going down the tube.”
Brownstein came by on Friday during the reopening to see the changes for himself.
“I wanted to see this restored to the way it was,” he said.
