Tag: Hotel Chelsea Takeover
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Hotel Chelsea Will Still Be All About Art and Music When King & Grove Takes Over
The aftershocks of today's news that King & Grove Hotels will be managing the chaotic Hotel Chelsea continue with this bit of info we received from a Hotel Chelsea insider. The source spoke about Patti Smith's private concert at the hotel on Wednesday for the building's new owner and the King & Grove management team (The Thursday night concert for the building's residents was cancelled after they protested.) The source says:
Patti's performance on Wednesday was the inauguration of a series of events related to music, the visual arts, literature and poetry, and film that will be curated by the ownership, management and creative teams of the Chelsea. The Chelsea will have new and established artists of all types performing, showing, creating and living there.
That's the future. What's there today is a decayed building in disrepair with a small minority of tenants who are so adverse to change that they'd prefer to live in squalor and pretend to care about the legacy than risk being a part of a successful restoration and return to relevancy that the Chelsea deserves.
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King & Grove to Take Over The Hotel Chelsea
Wow. We are stunned, stunned! The new boutiquey brand King & Grove Hotels will finally get a New York City outpost--in none other than the Hotel Chelsea.
In a Daily News piece over the kerfuffle about songstress Patti Smith doing a concert at the hotel (she later canceled the performance after tenants threatened to burn copies of her memoir, "Just Kids"), it made clear mention of King & Grove as the Chelsea's new management company:
On Wednesday, Smith posted a statement on her website, pattismith.net, defending her decision to work with the new owner of the hotel Joseph Chetrit and the Chelsea’s management company, King & Grove, which is headed by former Morgans Hotel Group CEO Ed Scheetz. On Wednesday night, Smith performed a show for friends and family of Chetrit, King & Grove and architect Gene Kaufman, who is overseeing the Chelsea’s renovation.
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Doughnut Plant Moves into the Chelsea Hotel
The arrival of bougie sweets shop Doughnut Plant may put the final gentrification nail in the coffin of the neighborhood named for the famed Chelsea Hotel—at least until the hotel itself gets torn down or converted into an Andre Balazs playpen.
Only the second-ever location of the cult-favorite Lower East Side dessert skunk works, this outpost will feature its own unique flavors that you won't find at Dunkin': chocolate chip, salty peanuts, and oatmeal are all on the menu, reports the New York Times.
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Why Do Ian Schrager and Andre Balazs Want The Hotel Chelsea?
It looks like Andre Balazs has a bit of an obsession with the spooky Bohemian outpost The Hotel Chelsea. Reports had him yet again visiting the for-sale property last week. But he's not the only one.
Now today The NY Post reports that Ian Schrager was also spotted touring the hotel again after having previously passed on it a few months ago. But we have to ask, Why?
We get that the hotel has an amazing history, especially with the art and music crowd, but it is a troubled property with vociferous tenants who are still determined to bring back the hotel's longtime manager, Stanley Bard, even though he was ousted two years ago.
Why would Schrager or Balazs want to even deal with this? Especially if they have ambitious plans for turning it into a "modern boutique hotel" (Schrager) or "Chateau Marmont East" (Balazs.)
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More Drama Unfolds at the Hotel Chelsea as New GM Moves to Evict Long-Term Residents
Things have gone from bad to worse for the residents of the storied Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan this week (check out our full coverage of the saga here).
Yesterday, new GM Andrew Tilley -- who claimed to "be a friend to the tenants" -- is reported to have posted eviction notices on the doors of "a large number of residents," some of whom had been living at the hotel for up to twenty years.
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Perhaps The Chelsea Really Does Let the BedBugs Bite
Uh-oh. When the last woman wrote into the Living With Legends blog -- that little corner of the Internet that has been chronicling the drama at the Hotel Chelsea for fans of the famed establishment and the residents who have suffered from the management changes -- and said she had bedbugs, we sorta implied that maybe she was a bit of a nutter.
But a little glance into the comment thread beneath that particular post on the LL blog revealed another recent guest at the Chelsea coming forward with a similar problem.
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Have Bedbugs Moved Into The Hotel Chelsea?
We weren't sure that things could get much more tumultuous for Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan -- whose management takeover has been an all-out, nonstop dramafest since the new folks in charge have butted heads with longtime residents of the storied Bohemian outpost -- but, alas, they have.
An irate guest of the hotel submitted an uncensored, unedited threatening-ish letter to our friends over at the Hotel Chelsea Blog reporting a hotel experience that was, uh, less than stellar.
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Hotel Chelsea Blog Wants Guests to Stay There Despite the Turmoil
Ever since the great Hotel Chelsea Takeover of 2007 which ousted the hotel/apartment building's beloved manager Stanley Bard, things just haven't been the same at this "last outpost of Bohemia."
In fact, things are probably even messier than ever, especially since the new management team of BD Hotels was dumped a few months back. (Possibly because they "stole pictures" from Flickr?)
The hotel now supposedly has a new manager (who's yet to show up for work) and things don't really seem to be improving over there.
Of course, this has potential hotel guests concerned and they are writing in to the Living with Legends blog, wondering if the hotel is safe enough for them to stay overnight.
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New Hotel Chelsea Manager Fed to Bohemian Lions
In another nail-biting plot twist in the never-ending saga of the Hotel Chelsea, a new character has walked in to stir things up.
Andrew Tilley, an English guy who has worked at the Hyatt Carlton Tower in London and, more recently, the Paramount/Hard Rock Hotel in New York (among other places), has been brought into the Chelsea as the next poor soul to attempt to fill Stanley Bard's shoes as manager.
For those of you who aren't up to speed on the drama, this dude has about as much of a chance of being warmly embraced by the Hotel Chelsea crowd as Drew Carey has with The Price is Right people. One post-Bard manager has already been chased out; hopefully this one will fare a little bit better.
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Is This The Woman Investigated for Hoarding at the Hotel Chelsea?
Not sure if you caught it but last month we stopped into the Hotel Chelsea for a brief respite from the hotel takeover and checked out the art exhibit that was going on there. Yet before we could make it to the art floors, about eight FDNY guys came in and proceeded straight up the stairs.
Later we found out that a woman who has lived there for 30 years was being investigated for a hoarding problem. Now we might know who that is. The NY Times has an article about a young artist in residence Sam Bennett who befriended his neighbor Bettina Grossman, a recluse and prolific artitst who became the subject of Bennett's documentary, "Bettina."
After two months, Mr. Bassett finally entered No. 503 to find that Ms. Grossman was, in fact, fiercely guarding an apartment nearly stuffed to the ceiling with hundreds of boxes, forcing her to live in her hallway and sleep on a deck chair.
Yikes. Grossman was almost evicted back in 2006 by the old management team for her apartment's frightening condition but a judge dismissed the petition. No doubt she was probably at the top of new management BD Hotels' hit list until they were fired last week. Unless, there's someone else hoarding stuff at the Hotel Chelsea.
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Breaking News: BD Hotels No Longer Managing Hotel Chelsea
The Living with Legends blog at the Hotel Chelsea is reporting that the management group BD Hotels has been fired from the hotel. Here are some details:
Legends has managed to obtain a copy of the arbitration filing that will ultimately determine who will manage the Chelsea Hotel. What happened in this case is that BD filed suit against the hotel (essentially Marlene Krauss, since she is the one running the show), alleging that Marlene fired them without cause, and that she has failed to pay them the Incentive Fee that she owes them.
Marlene Krauss fired BD for, along with other things, failing to live up to their duties. Now BD is trying to recoup some of that incentive fee which is around $2 million. Yikes. No one from BD Hotels has shown up at the hotel today and the blog is reporting that the locks on the manager's office have been changed.
This is probably going to get even messier but we're sure the residents of the hotel are at least a little happy about the firing. Um...well...probably more than a little happy judging from the photo above which was posted on the residents' blog.
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Finally, Some Positive Energy at the Hotel Chelsea
We always enjoy news about the Hotel Chelsea that doesn't involve a murder, a peeping Tom, or a hostile takeover.
We popped into the hotel last Friday to tour some of the first-floor rooms that had been transformed into mini-art galleries as part of the PooL Art Fair. Different emerging artists were able to showcase their work in the Chelsea's historic rooms. One lucky artist got to show off their work in the room where Sid Vicious may have killed Nancy. Here's a review from artinfo.com.
There was some quite excellent work here and -- as though to underscore how distant the whole enterprise was from the other fairs -- nobody tried to sell me anything. Come back next year, PooL. You'll be very welcome.
This art fair was put on by the hotel's new management BD Hotels who seems to be trying hard to respect the hotel's bohemian past. (Note: BD Hotels also manages the just-opened Greenwich Hotel, not that we care or anything.)
If you aren't aligning yourself with the new establishment then stop by the Museum of the City of New York tonight. The museum is hosting an evening dedicated to the 125th Anniversary of the Chelsea Hotel. Yes, the hotel is that old. There will be a reading and a panel discussion to commemorate the milestone. The event will also be showing a video interview with beloved former manager Stanley Bard.
Oh and it wasn't completely drama-free during our visit to the hotel. FDNY made a stop in to investigate a hoarding problem by one of the residents. Which is probably as representative of the Chelsea's wild boho spirit as the artwork hanging from the walls.
