HotelChatter

Idrisi tells HotelChatter that he agreed to take a lesser fee for his work on the Nicky O hotels (the other one will open in Chicago) in exchange for press coverage which would mention his name in all press releases. He signed his work contract with Chris Falor of Falor Companies and Falor's brother to Robert Falor who owns the Nicky O Hotels.

Yet during talks with a Miami Beach realtor, Mark Zilbert, who was assigned to sell the Nicky O condos within the hotel, Idrisi found out that Nicky's manager, Paul Fisher of Edge Management, wanted to keep Faye Resnick's name out of all press coverage. Guess being associated with an accused killer has quite a half life. Suspecting that Fisher was going to try to keep his name out of the press as well, Idrisi approached Resnick with this bit of info.

This set off a firestorm between Resnick and Fisher, both exchanging unpleasant emails to each other with the cliched "you'll never work in this town again" type of threats. Yet somehow Resnick and Fisher managed to work out a nice little deal--Resnick would be the designer assigned to decorate the condos in the hotel bought by celebrities. Like baller Tracy McGrady, who bought a $3.1 million condo at Nicky O based on the colored Idrisi rendering above.

Idrisi wasn't quite offered such a sweet deal. In fact, according to him, his services were suspended. But he says Fisher promised him that many celebrity clients would seek out Idrisi for his design services if he could manage to play by their rules. Idrisi declined to do so and now he wants credit for his work which he says Nicky has been promoting as her own, as evidenced in this People magazine article.

In many media outlets, and even in front of nude models, Nicky's been touted as being involved in every aspect of the hotel. As for those pretty posterboards Nicky unveiled at a recent press conference in Miami, those are the works of a new designer, Thomas Schoos, who was hired to tweak Idrisi's designs. But Idrisi was still angered to see this pic below of Nicky and Shoe standing in front of the Idrisi rendering he showed to McGrady.

Not getting the promised press coverage was one thing that ticked Idrisi off but now he would also like to be paid for his services, which he claims hasn't happened yet.

So what exactly has Nicky's role been in all of this? Idrisi paints Nicky as just a 23-yr-old kid manipulated by her handlers. Although he says the more serious of the Hilton sisters ("she's more goth" and "she has a bit of a rock n'roll edge"), hence the brunette look every one in a while, did have some input on the hotel design.

Sometimes she would send me something she ripped out of a magazine, and say 'I like this'.

We had a meeting in Miami by the pool of the Royal Palm with fashion designers who were going to design some suites. It was a very important meeting. We were all going over stuff and Nicky was just out there swimming in the pool with one of her friends that came down from New York. Every so often she would look over at us and wave.

Yeah, ok, we aren't playing Woodward and Bernstein here or anything, (and did we mention Idrisi has a major axe to grind?) Yet those last two quotes say it all, don't they? Perhaps celebrities should just stay away from hotels for a while.

So what do you think, is Nicky Hilton worthy of the hotelier moniker, or is she simply ripping Gansevoort South hotel photos out of Ocean Drive and saying "This is hot". Send us your tips, or just comment away.

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· Nicky Hilton Launches New Condo-Hotel on SOBE [CBS4]
· Nicky Hilton coverage [HotelChatter]