While we in no way pine for the days of Nicky O Hotels, a tipster found this picture from photographer's Hew Burney's website.
It musta been a birthday cake for Nicky Hilton in the shape of the Breakwater Hotel which was the doomed location for her further doomed Nicky O Hotels enterprise. Man, we're so glad this is over.
[UPDATE: It was only open for two months but CatHouse is already undergoing renovations for structural damage. We'll keep you posted on the reopening date.]
CatHouse the new "loungerie" and restaurant debuted inside the Luxor Hotel & Casino over the weekend without any official celebrity host thanks to Mischa Barton's penchant for drinking and driving.
A handful of other celebs did make it to the opening like Tommy Lee, Jack and Kelly Osbourne, Carrot Top as well as CatHouse celeb chef Kerry Simon and his Australian partners, Billy Cross and Mick Doohan, a five-time world Formula One motorcycle racing champion. So needless to say there were a lot of Aussies and gearheads in the place.
MORE on the CatHouse opening, including a Paris Hilton sighting, after the jump.
If you're a regular visitor to HotelChatter, you know that we heavily cover the hotel going ons in Miami in our Miami Hotel Mambo content, as well as the craziness that happens in Las Vegas in our Viva Vegas content.
Today, we can report on both scenes at once, thanks to the Pure Management Group. We have these people to thank (or hate) for the Pure Nightclub at Caesars Palace, the LAX club at Luxor, the Pussycat Dolls Lounge, and a bunch of other hotspots in Las Vegas.
Today Page Six reports that the group will open a 26,000-square-foot in the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach once the massive renovation project is completed next year.
And in the very near future, Dec. 5th, to be exact, Pure Management will celebrate the grand opening of their Company restaurant, an American bistro, inside the Luxor Hotel & Casino. Described as a "modern ski chalet", (in the Luxor, an Egypitan-themed casino?) the cuisine features American classics and "soon-to-be classics." Executive Chef Adam Sobel, formerly of Restaurant Guy Savoy, heads up the cuisine and celeb investors include Nick Lachey, Wilmer Valderamma, and the dreaded hotelier dropout Nicky Hilton.
This marks yet another change at the Luxor that will hopefully save it from crapping out. We wonder if they will eventually do away with the pyramid?
Note to self: If a Hilton sister ever approaches us with a business proposition, we're running in the opposite direction (unless it involves porn, of course).
If only we could've advised hotel magnate Robert Falor. It looks like any hopes of resuscitating his disastrous plans for the Nicky O hotel are now completely dead. Investors who put up cash for the ill-conceived/financed condo-hotel project filed a lawsuit last week in Cook County Circuit Court, claiming that:
Because the payments under the Contract for Deed were not timely paid and the final closing date has expired, the Contract for Deed has expired, and Printers Row no longer has the right to purchase the Blake Hotel or its property.
Falor, his lawyer, and executives at his real estate company all refuse to talk about this latest development. They're probably just exhausted from doing constant damage control: Two of his other downtown Chicago projects have also ended up in bankruptcy court.
Personally, we like Hotel Blake better anyway without the celebrity tenants. The 162-room hotel in the historic downtown building has comfy beds with red duvets and free WiFi. Though watching Falor's demise is just depressing at this point.
Meanwhile, Nicky Hilton has moved onto the restaurant biz. People reports she's opening a restaurant called The Company at the Luxor with Nick Lachey and Wilmer Valderamma. Look out guys. Nicky's business poison.
We don't even know how to break this to you, especially on a Monday morning, but it looks like Nicky O Hotels ain't over yet.
A devoted HotelChatter tipster, AFdude, emailed us over the weekend to alert us to the new official Nicky Hilton website. Here you can find information about Nicky's clothing endeavors, boutiques, fan club and the dreaded Nicky-O Hotels.
Last we left Nicky O, the project was dead in the ground and Nicky's developer Robert Falor was in some serious doo-doo with the property, not to mention he has a lawsuit against Nicky. But so far, there's no real new news on Nicky O on Nicky's website, other than the condo-tel might rise again. Kinda like Voldemort.
We still doubt that Nicky O will ever open up anywhere but we guess she's just trying to save face and get some more publicity at the same time.
The full email from our tipster is after the jump.
"Falor went bankrupt, what a loser! Cross him off my Blackberry!"
Nicky Hilton's disastrous Nicky O hotel plan has forced her developer Robert Falor and his Falor Companies to file for bankruptcy.
Oaktree lenders are suing Falor's Company for $36 million for failing to a) finish Nicky O and for b) failing to get celebs like Scott Storch or Pharrell Williams, or another "celebrity reasonably satisfactory to the Mezzanine Lender" to buy condos in the building.
So now that Oaktree's pulled out of the deal, Falor can't afford to renovate the property into a hotel-condo, regardless of Nicky O's presence. He's filing for bankrupty and plans to just make a regular old hotel sans condos. Key word: plans which is highly unlikely. He's probably hoping for someone to swoop in and buy it off of him. Maybe Clooney?
Either way, Nicky O got all sorts of media attention last fall* with Nicky making the usual press rounds. But it has turned out to be an embarrassment for everyone involved and Nicky hasn't even publicly commented on the destruction she left behind.
Perhaps the only person coming out on top is Mark Zilbert, who was initially assigned to sell the condo units of the proposed Nicky O South Beach.
But he found they weren't enamored by the idea of hotel ownership, no matter whose name was on the front door. "We were selling 300-square-foot hotel rooms," Zilbert said. "Celebrity clients are not interested in condo-hotels at all."
Zilbert will never sell condo-hotels to celebrities in this town again! By his own accord of course. Meanwhile, another hotel broker Guy Trusty (whatta name!) says Falor has given the hotel-model a bad name, thanks to Nicky O and some of his other failed condo-hotel ventures in South Florida.
All the while, Nicky Hilton's dating David Katzenberg and she and her tampon are hitting the Hollywood club scene nightly. Just another day in Hollywood folks!
*We wanna know---why hasn't People Magazine run an article on this yet since they were so gung-ho about Nicky's announcement last summer? Are they afraid they won't have exclusive rights to Paris' "How I Deal with Genital Herpes" story?
A Chicago development group is ditching plans to work with heiress Nicky Hilton to convert the Hotel Blake in Printers Row into a Nicky O's Chicago. "While we are always evaluating the marketplace, we anticipate that the property will remain as the Hotel Blake for the foreseeable future," Robert Falor, president of Robert Falor Investments, said Tuesday in a statement. The company also is dropping a similar conversion planned for the Breakwater hotel in Miami's chic South Beach. Nicky Hilton and her representatives could not be reached for comment.
Hotel Blake will remain the Blake, at least for now, and who knows what will happen to the old Edison Hotel on Ocean Drive, which is gutted at this point.
In any event, we are sure Nicky and her Balenciaga bag will resurface somewhere, probably in LA, and may even attempt a return to the hotel game, however it is time to stop holding out hope that Nicky O is going to happen. Shocking we know.
Despite what you might think, we are actually bummed about this. Not as upset as we were when Clooney's "upscale" Vegas project went up in flames, but bummed nonetheless.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, Robert Falor Investments and Grand USA Hotel Supply & Restaurant allege Hilton hasn't kept up her end of an April 2006 agreement in which she promised to promote the redevelopment project known as Nicky O's Chicago, a Nicky Hilton Hotel.
Hilton also allegedly contracted out interior design work she was supposed to perform and tried to charge it back to the developer, the lawsuit alleges. The development group also claims Hilton misrepresented that she and her associates had experience in hotel design.
Remember that official statement we were looking for? Guessing we don't have to connect the dots for you on this one. Nicky O could get much uglier than Las Ramblas.
0 Comments - Add Yours
by juliana
