An appeals judge has temporarily blocked the city from opening a controversial homeless shelter along Manhattan’s Billionaires Row.
Appellate Division Justice David Friedman granted an interim stay of a ruling that tossed a suit opposing Mayor de Blasio’s plan to convert the former Park Savoy Hotel into a shelter for 150 men.
The move prevents the city from moving anyone into the building at 158 W. 58th St., which stands back-to-back against the iconic, 75-story One57 apartment building, the city’s first “supertall” residential skyscraper.
Friedman’s Wednesday order also set an expedited schedule for the city to challenge the stay, giving both sides until May 20 to submit written arguments.
A lawyer for the West 58th Street Coalition, which filed the suit against the city and claims the proposed shelter is a firetrap, said Thursday the group was “committed to making sure this building is not occupied in its current unsafe and nonconforming condition.”
Lawyer Jeremy Honig noted the deadly blaze that killed a mom and her five children in Harlem early Wednesday.
“The city has an opportunity to prevent another similar tragedy before it happens, yet it remains hellbent on opening this shelter in this firetrap of a building in order to satisfy Mayor de Blasio’s political agenda,” Honig said.
A member of the coalition also said the group has found a compromise location for the shelter about a block away, in a building that now houses a rehab center.
M. Les Fischer, who has lived on the block for more than a decade and spoke Thursday at a news conference in front of the Park Savoy, said the rehab-center landlord was open to the idea, but city officials have adamantly refused to consider it because they “like the optics” of the Park Savoy location.
“They’re just intent on putting it there,” he said. “They like the way it looks . . . backed up against the billionaires’ building.”
A spokeswoman for the city Department of Homeless Services said officials “remain focused on opening [the Park Savoy] site as soon as possible so that we can provide high-quality shelter and employment services to hardworking New Yorkers experiencing homelessness as they get back on their feet.”
The spokeswoman, Arianna Fishman, added: “We are confident that the court will again recognize our vital need for these additional beds and look forward to opening our doors at this location.”
DHS also said any alternative location for the shelter needed to be formally proposed by a nonprofit willing to run it with the support of the property owner, and that no one with control of the building in question had contacted the city.