We can't believe it! Matt Moss and Gregory Peck, once besties growing up on Long Island, are like totally never speaking to each other again.
We kinda figured there was some trouble brewing when we interviewed Gregory Peck over the summer about the Cooper Square Hotel and he couldn't put us in touch with Matt Moss, only Matt's publicist. And then Matt's publicist was like "Whatever!" And then we had to rush off to P.E.
Anyways, the New York Observer totally outed the fight today and all these grown-up investors are like really POed that Moss isn't keeping them in the loop.
But like OMG, Matt Moss totally went behind Greg Peck's back and is starting MK Hotels with Klaus Ortleib and this is the group that will run the hotel. This is exactly what our Ouija board exclusively told us!! Major Dramz! But that's all for now. Gotta sing along to High School Musical. Luvya!
In other news safe for your diary: · Palms Place will have celebrity residents like Hulk Hogan, Paul Stanley of KISS and Jessica Simpson. Well, we didn't say A-list celebrities. [The Vegas Eye] · The Water Club at the Borgata will open in June. [Newsday] · Looks like Diablo Cody celebrated her Oscar at the Four Seasons. We'd know that flower anywhere. [Egotastic] · NYC might get a Ferry Building Hotel! [NYT] · SNL coming to Vegas? [Rush&Molloy]
We must have missed this over the MLK Holiday but we were recently googling the drama-plagued Cooper Square Hotel yesterday and we came across this article in the NY Times from January 20th.
The topic is how NYC developers are working around tenants who refuse to move or be relocated. This is actually something that Gregory Peck told us about when he talked Cooper Square last summer.
The hotel is attached to a four-story tenement building which will not be torn down and will instead continue to house its long-time residents on the top two floors. The Cooper Square Hotel will keep offices on the second floor and basement.
We are a bit torn here because no one wants to see long-term residents booted for a large vibrator-shaped hotel but Matt Moss might be overreaching about his hotel guests' expectations.
Mr. Moss says he considers it an asset that guests in the $100 million hotel, which opens this summer, may peer down on a tenement roof where laundry is being hung out to dry.
"That's the kind of thing people want to see," he said.
Um...no. Granted this is NYC and most hotel room views are of a brick wall so looking at laundry could be an improvement. Yet saying that guests paying $500+ a night would want to see tenement laundry might be stretching it a bit.
Also, we think Matt may not have quite understood the whole hotel voyeurism trend. It's the guests who are supposed to be the objects of voyeurism, not the residents next door.
We wanna know what you think. Is laundry on the line an asset now when staying on the Bowery? Put your thoughts here.
The hotel's backers are looking to buy three adjacent lots and the residents are to say the least, concerned. As you know, this is a pretty feisty bunch and they have resisted the hotel from the very beginning.
But what has them really concerned now is the planned second-floor terrace which ends just 30-inches from an apartment building next door. Thus they are presuring the community board to withhold a liquor license until the hotel can ease the residents' fears. And here is where Matt Moss speaks:
"The block association gave us a list of their concerns," says developer Matthew Moss of the Peck Moss Group. "We agreed right off the bat to half of them or so, but some of the things they wereasking for were a little difficult for us to agree to" and those are items that are still being discussed.
Still Moss agreed to soundproof the windows and air conditioners in nearby apartments so the residents won't have to deal with hotel party noise. The only glitch is that the landlord in the East 5th Street apartment building won't let installations proceed.
And the saga continues. We bet Gregory Peck is just relieved his name wasn't mentioned this time around.
A while back we wrote about how hotelier Gregory Peck was definitely still involved in the Cooper Square Hotel project but as we did, we noticed some obvious cracks in the friendship/work relationship with co-developer Matt Moss.
We couldn't get Matt Moss to speak with us and even verifying the Peck-Moss partnership with Moss' people was somewhat of a struggle. Nevertheless, we learned that Peck was still in on an ownership level and that Cooper Square would be opening sometime in April 2008.
But then we received a tip from HotelChatter reader Low Pro who says that Matt Moss is pursuing another partnership with Cooper Square's general manager Klaus Ortlieb.
I know for a fact that Matt Moss and Klaus Ortlieb were pursuing a deal here in NYC under the company name of MK Hotels. According to a friend who went to Penn with Moss, they are planning on pursuing deals on the strength of Klaus' reputation with Andre [Balazs] and THOR and Matt's experience first with Related and then as a strip mall
developer in Long Island.
As for what's happened between Moss and Peck, Low Pro says its a united front strictly for the hotel opening but that they are not partners anymore. Who knows if Low Pro's info is spot on, but if it is, it sure does fill in some holes. Either way, don't expect anymore hotels from PeckMoss ever again.
As for MKHotels, we already found a website under that name but its for Molinaro Koger and they offer hotel real estate advisory and brokerage services. So we're thinking whatever MK Hotels deals are going on are probably still in the pipe dream stage.
Now that Six Columbus is taking reservations, we have half a mind to lay off the New York hotel scene and its never-ending delays. But with so many other projects to spy on, we just can't bring ourselves to do it.
And getting back to Jason Pomeranc, once Six Columbus opens we'll have the Smyth Tribeca to look forward to in 2008 and Thompson Lower East Side which is just "coming soon."
The new luxury boutique hotel, Cooper Square Hotel, is rapidly rising in NYC's Bowery neighborhood. Its construction has been heavily chronicled here and on NYC blogs from the first design rendering ("full frontal") to the "high tech glass panels" Curbed spotted on the sidewalk last week. And don't forget our view of the construction from our bath at the Bowery Hotel last month.
But it's the drama that's been going on behind the scenes, that is creating the most noise. Last we heard, developer-not-the-actor Gregory Peck had been kicked out of Cooper Square, a hotel concept he developed with his partner and old high school buddy, Matt Moss, nearly three years ago.
Additionally, Cooper Square has faced tremendous opposition from the community who have complained about the design, the hotel's height, the construction and the hectic nightlife scene they fear the hotel will bring once it opens. Did someone say Meatpacking District?
Attempting to control the negative vibes about Cooper Square, Peck reached out to HotelChatter with his side of the story. More importantly, for hotel geeks like us he dished the details of what's inside amenity-wise at Cooper Square when its opens this spring.
Last time we checked in on the The Cooper Square Hotel there was some speculation that the hotel was being torn down before it even began. But alas, the hotel will continue to rise.
Meanwhile, Eater reports that the hotel was pretty much denied a liquor license for their outdoor terrace due to lack of organization and political skills. However, the Bowery Hotel folk were able to get theirs using all the right moves. Or whatever, we just felt like referencing Tom Cruise's early days.
The site has posted numerous pictures (like this one) of the construction and reports that construction crews have been "seen using jack hammers to chew away at those crazy concrete columns" meaning that the hotel could be a tear down before it has even opened.
Which isn't that surprising given all the drama with Gregory Peck and his PeckMoss development company which crashed and burned not too long ago. But to hack down a building that's half-way up is a big deal. Curbed has some ideas as to who or what could be behind this and commenters on the story are saying something was built wrong so they had to tear it down.
Either way, it's just another example of overzealous developers and feuding hoteliers who never seem to get the job done.
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