Planned 21-Story Shelter, Housing For Midtown East Moving Forward

MIDTOWN, NY — A plan to knock down a seven story city shelter Midtown building and replace it with a new, 21-story facility is finally moving forward.

First reported by Crain's New York Business, the newly filed plans show that the project at the East 45th Street site, between Second and Third Avenues, will include 15 floors with 130 units of permanent affordable housing and five floors for a 171-bed women's shelter.

A Project Renewal spokesperson told Patch that the development's 130 permanent housing units split between 79 supportive units and 51 affordable apartments, which mirrors the 2021 proposal.

The planned medical clinic will also be available to the community, the spokesperson added.

Currently the existing seven-story building at 225 East 45th St. is a city-owned shelter which is run by Project Renewal, a homeless services provider. The city announced in 2021 that it would sell the building, which it has owned since 1993, to Project Renewal for the project. According to property records, the sale has yet to go through, but a spokesperson said the sale should close at the end of the year.

The building was originally an orphanage and convent built in 1939 by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. After the city bought it, it continued its good deed status as the 130-bed New Providence Women's Shelter.

According to 2021 plans, the new, 216-foot-tall building will contain 171 shelter beds in addition to the residential units for formerly homeless and low-income New Yorkers, as well as a medical clinic and on-site social services.

In Greenwich Village, the landlord at a Project Renewal project has faced a well-heeled fight in their plans to convert the building into a women's shelter with 90 beds. A new lawsuit was recently filed against the landlord, citing construction woes and city building code violations, according to The Real Deal. That project had received a "strong" and unanimous letter of support from Community Board 2 back in 2020.

Construction for the $125 million Midtown project, which received a thumbs up from the Community Board and Borough President over a year ago, should begin in December, Crain's reported, and is expected to wrap up by summer 2026.

Update March 30: This story was edited to clarify a mistake on a DOB filing that was since corrected and to clarify the nature of the West Village lawsuit along with additional detail from a Project Renewal spokesperson.