ABOVE: The 141-room Square Hotel at 226 West 50th Street between 8th Avenue and Broadway is across from Gershwin Theatre, where the musical “Wicked” is playing. PHOTO: Google Maps

One critic said “lazy” hotel operators have concluded that it’s more profitable to take the easy money from the city to fully occupy their rooms with migrants rather than book tourists.

By Carl Campanile and Marie Pohl | New York Post

A chic hotel in the heart of Broadway has been quietly operating as a migrant shelter for over a year, The Post has learned, as the Big Apple continues to grapple with the ongoing crisis.

The 141-room Square Hotel at 226 West 50th Street between Eighth Avenue and Broadway is just across from Gershwin Theatre, where the musical “Wicked” is playing.

“To our valued guests: it is with great sadness that we announce the Square Hotel will be closed for the foreseeable future. We appreciate your patronage and hope to welcome you back someday soon,” the Square Hotel says on its Facebook page.

The hotel’s website says, “Please pardon our appearance as we slip into something new! We look forward to welcoming you in the future.”

The hotel site still boasts a Japanese restaurant and bar in its lobby and “Art Nouveau styled hotel rooms”  with “sophisticated furniture, plush beds with down comforters and deluxe linens, flat-screen televisions with cable and C.O. Bigelow toiletries.”

But recent visits to the Square Hotel found a much different scene.

A National Guard soldier is seen stationed at the entrance of the lobby.

A couple with carry on luggage walked into the hotel on Sunday, but were escorted out by National Guardsmen.

A sign placed at the lobby entrance last week warned that motor bikes chained to scaffolding and poles in front of the hotel would be cut and removed.

One critic said “lazy” hotel operators even in the Great White Way have concluded that it’s more profitable to take the easy money from the city to fully occupy their rooms with migrants rather than book tourists.

“These hotels could be doing a fine tourist business right now, but they are being lazy, and a sure-thing 100-percent occupancy on the city dime, and without having to provide traditional hotel services, is just too good a deal to pass up,” said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Other pro-business advocates said it’s sad that the city and the hotel industry are turning the Broadway District into a migrant district.

“We consider the Broadway District a key to the city’s economy. There is only one Broadway —in the entire world!” said state Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar  

Kassar said it’s another blow for the Big Apple after the historic Roosevelt Hotel near Grand Central Terminal was converted into a massive migrant shelter and intake center.

But migrants fleeing poverty and upheaval in their homelands said the shelter was a lifeline while they try to find work and become self-sufficient.

“We all pay the price for one or two bad guys. One guy goes to do something bad and then they say all Venezuelans are bad,” Jesus Delber, 27, told The Post.

“But not everyone is like that. I came to work. I didn’t find work for three months. But I didn’t give up. If you are willing to work hard, life will always help you find honest work,” said Delbert.

Theatergoer Nina, a 64-year-old retired executive secretary from Brooklyn was on her way to see “Sign of the Times,” playing at the nearby New World Stages and said the asylum seekers “have to go somewhere.”

“I am an empathic person,” she said.

“But the mayor is not handling this well. The president is not handling this well.”

Retiree Judie Rudman, 57, who came to see Arthur Miller’s “Enemy of The People” with her husband and three kids, said, “I’m more concerned about the migrants than the theater goers,” Rudman said. “If they have a place to stay it makes the city safer.”

A mayoral spokesman said the Square Hotel has been a migrant shelter since last spring.

The nonprofit that works for the improvement of Times Square said that during that time, there have been no issues with the Square Hotel.

“This hotel has been operating as a shelter for over a year without incident or complaint. We have every reason to believe the hotel management and the NYC DHS will continue to do so, and work with the community should an issue arise,” said Tom Harris, president of Times Square Alliance.

More than 100 city hotels have agreed to convert into emergency shelters for migrant families and individuals who have flooded the city from the southern border. ##