Plenty of Gloom at the Hotel Chelsea
Evictions and lawsuits continue—now add suicide threats and irony
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Tales of Retail
Innumerable authors, artists and musicians have inhabited the iconic Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street over the years.
But laser hair-removal specialists?
“I did laser hair removal, I did laser acne, I did laser wrinkle work, electrolysis, facials; I’m also a filmmaker,” said 55-year-old Marta Rodriguez, who’s been zapping bohemians’ blemishes and unwanted hair follicles out of a tiny, third-floor studio in the old arty hotel for the past six years.
Yet no longer: “They threw me out!”
This past Friday, Ms. Rodriguez surrendered her keys to Room 307, glumly joining a growing list of assorted occupants who’ve been booted out of the Chelsea in recent weeks.
Hotel management apparently wanted musician Adam Rushfield out of Room 320 so badly that it formally agreed to forget his $14,106 in unpaid rent, provided that he left the premises by Feb. 29.
Cowboy-hat-clad painter David Combs, who owed more than $10,000, split town for Texas. “To their credit, they did give me a generous amount of time before they sued me,” Mr. Combs told The Observer.
Meanwhile, musician Jann Paxton, who is bedridden with cancer and several other serious illnesses, continues to face eviction proceedings after a benefactor who has been paying his rent for years got fed up with the hotel’s erratic rate changes and stopped accepting the charges altogether this past summer. According to court papers, he owes more than $30,000.
“I will probably die if I am evicted,” said Mr. Paxton, 46, who had been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation because of “threats that he was talking about killing himself,” according to housing court records.
Unlike the others, however, Ms. Rodriguez wasn’t behind on the rent. She was simply in the way, as new management’s efforts to “reinvigorate” the Chelsea into a more modern Manhattan inn continue apace.
“I told them my clientele was probably going to be very beneficial to the new hotel, the new look,” she said. Management wasn’t interested.
Ms. Rodriguez felt shortchanged. She had planned to stick around much longer when she first negotiated a lease with longtime Chelsea Hotel manager Stanley Bard in June 2002, investing nearly $50,000 to spruce up the shabby studio space. “I put marble floors in the place, I put doors and closets,” she said. “It was a mess and I really made it beautiful.”
The beauty treatments continued long after her initial three-year lease expired. Call it a mutual understanding. The personable albeit unconventional proprietor Mr. Bard was sort of known for his informal management style—or, mismanagement, according to his critics—allowing struggling artists to get behind on the rent while finishing their masterpieces and reputedly even accepting artwork in lieu of rent, although he has formally denied it.
“It was kind of understood that I could stay there, that I could even maybe expand,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “I was going to do a little spa.”
Of course, that was before Mr. Bard’s overthrow last summer by rival hotel heirs David Elder and Marlene Krauss, who replaced him with corporate manager BD Hotels.
“The new management came in and said, ‘You don’t have a lease, you have to move out,’” said Ms. Rodriguez, who spent the past three months contesting her termination in housing court before finally deciding to move out and move on. “I didn’t want to spend the money on lawyers for another year of this,” she said.
Ms. Rodriguez had come to the Chelsea Hotel to cater to the touring musicians and film crews that frequent the place. “I wasn’t looking for the rich Upper East Side women,” she said. “I was looking for an artistic high-end clientele. And that’s what the hotel meant for me. It’s an offbeat clientele who also has some money, you know—that’s what I was going for; and the image I wanted to bring as opposed to a clinical dermatologist office on the Upper East Side.
“I don’t know that I can get this where I am now,” added Ms. Rodriguez, who will open a new laser treatment center, located two blocks away at 425 West 23rd Street, this week. Next Page >
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I lived in the Hotel Chelsea, Mr. Bard was a decent guy not after the last buck. I moved to a rent-stablized unit nearby that a corrupt slum landlord was trying to harass tenants out of. We went to STILL AFTER 30 YEARS PERMANENT DEMOCRATIC ASSEMBLMAN RICHARD GOTTLIEB and then District Leader NOW STATE SENATOR TOM DUANE. I "stayed out of it" because, frankly I didn't trust now JULIE NADEL of the Park Committee, then Gottfried's assistant chief of staff and then boyfriend and boss in Gottfried's office EBEN BRONFMAN - now of Morgenthau's office or was before the divorce scandal - SURPRISE! SURPRISE! in 1986 instead of the Assemblyman coming to the building I lived in and helping he, NADEL, and BRONFMAN went to another building that was on an ILLEGAL RENT Strike but had a REPORTER LIVING IN IT! I realized then my Democratic Party was just like the Republicans (EBEN BRONFMAN WAS THE STATE COMMITTMAN and lived in a "TIL" $250 purchase coop in Hell's Kitchen!)
As long as my fellow Democrats keeping electing the same lying, self-centered elitists (Remember Gottfried inheredited his coop on Central Park West and his estate in Columbia County) with the same list of self-serving staffs like Scott Stringer, Thomas Duane, Gale Brewer, Christine Quinn, Debra Glick, Eric Schneiderman, Ronnie Eldridge, and Ruth Messinger, the affordable housing crisis on Manhattan will continue. As long as phony groups like the Met Council on Housing, HCC, and CHDC and poverty pimps like Joanne Romano, Bob Neuwirth, Kate Lynch, and Joe Restuccia continue to dominate the non-profits and so-call "neighborhood organizations" things are just going to continue their corrupt way.
I am lucky, I had the foresight to move out of New York City and Miami Beach (which has the same problems) into winter and a summer communities that are not over priced, overburdered or overrun with every self-inflicted social disease and malaise the voters in the Democratic Party can inflict on the general population and their fellow party members.
You get the government you vote for in a democracy. Manhattan and Miami Beach wanted and want low class and low rent fake "elites" screaming left-wing political double cross, well they have it! AND THEY ARE WELCOME TO IT!
Artists are specially protected under NYC rental laws. You contribute so much to society unlike the rest of us working stiffs that you are not only entitled to live rent free, this city is obligated to find you a place of equal value where you can continue to churn paintings of shapes. I would contact a lawyer to discuss this immediately.
Stanley Bard was a real prince, a real human being, a guy who cared about business, cared about art, and cared about people too. That is why so many monumental people stayed there, and created so much there. New York city used to be ruled by its heart, its pocketbook and its balls. It's only ruled by the pocketbook now.
They're trying to kick out a terminally ill guy. This is Depression-Era villainy
The vampires of the second gilded age are upon us,sucking the life out of the city and discarding the poor and artistic to make way for their steel and glass crypts,I mean condos.
First, I am pleased to report that I do still work in the Manhattan DA's office and in fact have done so since 1985. Second, I have NEVER lived in any TIL building anywhere, have never owned an apartment anywhere and I have never paid $250 in rent--I wish! I also have no recollection of any of the events this writer alludes to. I did organize a number of rent strikes and tenant groups during the period I worked for Assemblymember Gottfried and I am proud to have worked for him and of the tenant advocacy work we did.
I also can never remember being invited to the Chelsea Hotel to organize it... and this clearly bitter, confused writer says he "stayed out of it" and never invited any of us to the building!
Hopefully most bloggers are more responsible about their facts!
Oh, please. Arthur "Artie Nash" Rosenblatt is just a rich kid prep school drop-out living off his parents money. He was fighting Bard - who never even wanted him around - for residency and started witholding rent soon after he checked in as a hotel guest. Nash-Rosenblatt is no friend of the Chelsea hotel, he contributes nothing (hasn't paid rent in years, is a suspect in the 2nd floor drug ring along with Daudi, and was likely behind the painting slashings after feuding with his true-artist neighbors across the hall). In fact, the only thing Rosenblatt has "curated" is his arms with tattoos.
The only one to blame for the current sad state of the Chelsea Hotel institution is Stanley Bard, who let these people take advantage of his good will and poor planning.
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