City sets up family migrant shelter with 100 cots, baby supplies at McCarren Park in Brooklyn

Jun 29, 2023

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The city began setting up a makeshift migrant shelter with 100 cots and baby supplies at Brooklyn’s McCarren Park Friday — as Mayor Eric Adams refused to discuss the controversial move and parents worried about their kids using the park’s popular pool and other facilities.

Workers unloaded items from trucks to retrofit the park’s popular Play Center — which houses a basketball court and gym in hipster-friendly Williamsburg — and brought in “cots, military style,” cribs and baby formula.

Despite supplies for tots being loaded into the building, city course insisted Friday the shelter would only be for adults.

Still, regardless of who will be living there, the prospect of 80 homeless asylum-seekers staying in the facility worried some residents.

The migrants could move in as soon as Saturday, according to local lawmakers who were notified of the plan by City Hall Wednesday night.

“If the pool [area] becomes a migrant shelter, I won’t bring the kids here anymore,” said Jose Collado, 43, of Glendale, Queens, who has daughters ages 10 and 13.

“Nothing against the migrants, but if there’s 80 men living here, I just wouldn’t feel comfortable having my daughters play here.”

He added, “I know the migrants have to go somewhere. I think Central Park is a better alternative because there are more open areas away from where children play.”

The asylum-seekers will be housed in the south wing of the McCarren Play Center, which hosts an after-school arts program that could be bumped out of the space.

“Terrible, it’s just terrible,” said Tabitha Acaba, of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, whose 5-and-6-year old kids attend the program.

“I work and my children attend after-school care in the south wing. For working parents, it’s an extra level of support,” she said.

“I got an email that it might be used for migrants but I don’t know what the kids will do.”

The shelter, which Adams initially said would house “80 adult” migrants, appeared to be prepped for families — complete with baby wipes and toddler cots.

As workers loaded supplies in the rec center Friday, boxes could be seen that were labeled “supplies to support shelter staff and facility set-up,” and included face masks, megaphones, extension cords and posters with rules.

It comes just days after Adams warned that the city’s spiraling migrant crisis is coming “to a neighborhood near you.”

Asked about concerns neighbors may have about the facility Friday, Adams shot back, “Everybody should have concerns.”

“We need the federal government’s help and when we make announcements on our next move, we will let everybody know,” he told The Post before walking away.

The McCarren Play Center’s south wing — where the migrants will be housed — currently features open multi-purpose rooms, which has hosted fitness and dance classes, and a media lab, a city staffer on-site said.

The area has toilets but no showers, which will need to be brought in to the center, the staffer said, adding that migrants will enter via a dedicated door beside the skate park.

Lawmakers insisted Friday that the park’s pool and fitness center “won’t be impacted” and that the shelter takes up space in the building’s under-used media lab center.

There was no word on whether after-school programs would be moved, one elected official said.

Meanwhile, roughly 50 migrants — who had spent days camping outside the city’s inundated processing center at the Roosevelt Hotel — were brought to the Watson Hotel in Hells Kitchen Thursday night.

They had no clue Friday where they’d be sent next, as City Hall has repeatedly warned of the surge pushing its shelters to the brink.

“We came here last night on a bus. There was about 40 to 50 men on the bus,” said Heberto, 21, of Venezuela.

“We stayed at the Roosevelt [Hotel] for about 6 days before they moved us here yesterday,” he said. “I don’t know how long we will be staying here until they move us again.”

Asked Friday about the possibility of housing asylum seekers in Central Park, Adams said, “Right now we are looking everywhere to deal with the influx of close to 2,500 [migrants] a week.”

“We have to find the room, I’ve been having a series of conversations with our various elected leaders. We want to minimize the amount of intrusion and we want to treat people with dignity that they deserve,” he said.”We are still figuring out all the pieces.”

Earlier in the week, Adams stressed that the city had been left to deal with the crisis without help from the federal government.

“As we have emphasized repeatedly, with nearly 100,000 asylum seekers that have come through our intake system since spring 2022 — and hundreds more continuing to arrive in our city, asking for shelter on a daily basis — New York City has been left alone to deal with a national crisis that demands difficult and swift decision-making,” he said Thursday night.

“We are constantly searching for new places to give asylum seekers a place to rest their heads, and, most recently, located a wing of the McCarren Recreation Center in Brooklyn to house adult asylum seekers.”