City breaks ground on $184M rebuild of Chinatown's fire-gutted 70 Mulberry Street, home to MOCA and a senior center

The city on Monday broke ground on a $184 million reconstruction of 70 Mulberry Street, the 19th-century former public school in Chinatown that was badly damaged by a five-alarm fire in January 2020, the Mayor's Office announced. The rebuilt building is expected to be finished in 2030, 6sqft reported.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined the commissioners of Design and Construction (DDC), Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) and Cultural Affairs for the groundbreaking. "Now, we're bringing them home," the mayor said of the organizations displaced by the fire.

Who is coming back

The building will again be the permanent home of the five groups that filled it before the fire:

• CPC Chinatown Senior Citizen Center
• United East Athletic Association
• Chen Dance Center
• Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)
• Chinatown Manpower Project

Many have kept running programs at interim locations since 2020, but at reduced capacity, the city said. MOCA at first feared most of its roughly 85,000-item collection stored in the building had been destroyed, but much of it was salvaged, 6sqft noted.

What gets preserved — and what's new

• History kept: two stories of the original facade and the corner stair tower with its spiral staircase will be integrated into the new building. The original five-story school, designed by C.B.J. Snyder, opened in the 1890s as Public School 23 and became a community center after it closed as a school in the mid-1970s.
• Bigger: eight stories with about 30% more public space — roughly 51,000 square feet returned to the nonprofits plus 16,500 square feet of community space, according to 6sqft.
• Inside: six community rooms, a new kitchen for the senior center, and a sixth-floor multipurpose room overlooking Columbus Park that opens onto landscaped terraces along Mulberry and Bayard streets. The spaces will hold up to 475 people, the city said.
• Access and energy: three elevators, a new lobby and accessible restrooms for full ADA compliance; an all-electric building with a rooftop solar canopy and solar panels in the facade expected to cover up to 30% of its electricity, targeting LEED Platinum.
• Art: Wings of Everchange, a three-part installation by Jennifer Wen Ma through the city's Percent for Art program, including a roughly 33-foot suspended sculpture made with objects saved from the 2020 fire.

The team and the price tag

Grimshaw is the architect and Hunter Roberts Construction Group the construction manager. DDC said it is the first time it has used its Construction Manager-Build method outside library projects or emergencies, 6sqft reported. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged $170 million for the rebuild in 2021; the cost is now $184 million.