Ah, you just don't get it fellow commenters, or maybe you do and you're parroting the BD party line because of your own agendas. The Chelsea was neither decaying nor rent-free. This is more propaganda from the new regime who realize hat they've done and wish to pretty it up. The Chelsea Hotel was an institution like none other, one that fostered an incredible number of artists. You are likely to find more burnouts with china white with a BD hotel (of course, burnotus with lots of money are socially more acceptable to our new overlords). The takeover means the death of real bohemia in Manhattan, the loss of a magical place, the end of a miracle. And all this done to a man who had the majority ownership in the hotel and worked there. All change is not good, and it is moronic to say so. Changing a heralded and rare institution into another banal "luxury" hotel for tourists is not a good change. God Bless the Chelsea residents for being the last hold out against the creeping conformity of middle America, against the homogenization, fakery and corporatization of New York. The city has become so, well, DULL.