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A onetime “hot sheet” motel turned migrant shelter in the Bronx will soon start a new chapter as an educational facility after a city agency scooped up the Riverdale parcel for just above $9 million.
The New York City School Construction Authority — an entity separate from the Department of Education that manages the design, construction and renovation of school facilities in the five boroughs — purchased the commercial lot at 6393 Broadway from the Loewy family for $9.2 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register this week. The size of the lot was not immediately known.
For years what was called the Van Cortlandt Motel at the corner of West 256th Street was patronized by sex workers before it was used as a homeless shelter and then to house migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., according to local Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who said that migrants are no longer staying there and have been moved elsewhere.
Dinowitz told Crain’s that the site, which also includes the parcel at 6389 Broadway and sits across from the sprawling Van Cortlandt Park, has long been an eyesore and will do well as a center for education, especially in a neighborhood that’s struggling for classroom capacity.
“Having a school there will be a huge improvement,” he said.
The former owner of the property, Jeffrey Loewy, told Crain’s that he had purchased it in the mid-1950s, though he doesn’t remember how much he paid, and that the motel was operated by a private group before being used by the city as a shelter. Several decades later, it was finally time to sell it, he said.
The authority plans to demolish the two vacant buildings currently occupying the commercial lot to make way for the new pre-kindergarten-through-fifth-grade primary school, which will add about 23 classrooms and 547 seats to the district, as part of the city’s capital plan to bring 15 new school buildings and 7,000 seats to the borough. Available real estate is hard to come by in the city, according to the authority, which must seek out sites that check off certain general requirements, such as having at least 25,000 square feet of land.
The future school building is scheduled to include two special education classrooms; reading, speech, music and art rooms; as well as a cafeteria, library and gym. Plans for the site also include an 11,800-square-foot play area, according to authority spokesman Kevin Ortiz.
Ortiz could not provide a cost estimate for construction of the new classrooms, as the authority has just begun its design process, but said it has an anticipated opening date of September 2028.
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Julianne Cuba , 2024-04-26 12:03:03
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