Close User Name Password
Login Register
Hotel stories straight to your inbox:

Tag: robert falor View All Tags

Tags: / / / / /

Robert Falor :: King of "Heartbreak Hotels"

September 2, 2008 at 11:56 AM | by juliana | 0 Comments

The NYT recently profiled the most reviled hotel developer on the planet right now and no, it's not Donald Trump.

The man is Robert Falor, the once and former condo-hotel king who almost supported the failed Nicky O hotels venture from Nicky Hilton as well as the failed Rande Gerber/Maxim bar inside the Royal Palm Hotel in South Beach.

And guess what? He's flat broke and has no friends.

more ›

Tags: / / / / /

Falor The Failure Adds Another Lawsuit To The Pile

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: 500 S. Dearborn St. [map], Chicago, il, United States, 28204
September 13, 2007 at 9:00 AM | by ced138 | 0 Comments

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.

Related Stories:
· Nicky O coverage [HotelChatter]
· Another Lawsuit For Falor [Chicago Business]

Tags: / / / /

Has Nicky O Started a Downward Spiral of Condo Hotels?

March 29, 2007 at 12:08 PM | by juliana | 3 Comments

"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?

Related Stories:
· Would-be 'Nicky O' hotels file for bankruptcy [Miami Herald]
· The Rise and Fall of Nicky O South Beach [HotelChatter]

Tags: / / / /

Nicky O'fficially O'ver and O'ut

Where: 1410 Ocean Drive [map], Miami Beach, FL, United States, 33139
February 21, 2007 at 10:11 AM | by markj | 3 Comments

Well it is official.  As we first told you almost two weeks ago, Nicky O sleeps with Las Rambalas now.  Nicky Hilton's short lived career as a semi-hotelier is finished.

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.

Related Stories:
· Hotel Group Drops Nicky Hilton Plans [Chicago Tribune]

Tags: / / / /

Falor Sues Nicky Hilton

February 13, 2007 at 11:09 AM | by markj | 0 Comments

Breaking

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.

Related Stories:
· Nicky O coverage [HotelChatter]
· Nicky Hilton Sued Over Hotel Project [Wahington Post]

Tags: / /

Hot Hotelier News: Robert Falor Pulled All the Chicks in High School

October 9, 2006 at 2:22 PM | by juliana | 0 Comments

Thanks to a hard-hitting Q&A done by the Miami Herald, we learn about Robert Falor, the 38-year-old hotelier behind the Royal Palm Hotel in South Beach, which is home to the Rande Gerber Maxim Lounge.

He's also the man behind the Mayfair Hotel in the Miami-area, and the Hotel Blake in the Printers Row district of Chicago.

And he knows a lot about hotels because he grew up in an old Chicago hotel, the Fremont, where he was basically a high school hotel pimp. Case in point:

JB: You bring dates home in high school? How weird was that?

RF: (Laughs) Yeah, high school was great . . . Um, better leave it at that.

This man was practically born for hot hotelierness, except he helped Nicky Hilton design her Nicky O hotels.

While he says that Nicky was involved in all aspects of the planning, we find it interesting that the two places Nicky O Hotels are opening are in Miami and Chicago--just like Falor's hotels. Hopefully, he had nothing to do with that entertainment ticker in the Nicky O hotel elevators.

Related Stories:
· Unbuttoned [Miami Herald]
· Portfolio [RFalor.com]
· Rande Gerber's Maxim Lounge To Debut at Royal Palm [HotelChatter]