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Schrager to Buy Chicago's Ambassador East Hotel?

Hot gossip for the oh-so-early morning: Crain's is reporting that Ian Schrager is in talks to buy the not-so-buzzed-about-anymore Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago (along with its Pump Room restaurant).

Obviously, he would rename and completely revamp the 285-room, somewhat distressed property. Per Crain's:

Mr. Schrager hasn't decided on the hotel's new name, or whether he'd rename the Pump Room, where celebrities from Bette Davis to Frank Sinatra to Natalie Wood once held court. During the heyday of cross-country train travel, the late Sun-Times newspaper columnist Irv Kupcinet was a fixture in the restaurant's Booth One, where he interviewed movie stars passing through Chicago on trips between the coasts.

Aww, bringin' back an old scene-y place. We suppose that if anyone can take something and make it trendy again, it woulde be the Schrager-man — and though the deal between Schrager and the owners is supposedly still "in talks," there are whispers that the owners (who paid $44.5 million when they purchased the hotel a couple years ago) have already accepted his $25 million offer.