Today marked the ceremonial ribbon-cutting of the hugely hyped Chelsea hotel in Atlantic City.

Hotelier Curtis Bashaw recently sat down with The Observer to discuss the $110 million project, which aims to lure more young, hip New Yorkers to South Jersey's gritty gaming town and otherwise restore some of the ancient seaside destination's long-lost glamour.

"We do a lot of real estate projects -- we've done ground-up buildings in the city and all sorts of other stuff -- but these hotel renovation projects are among the most challenging and rewarding and pleasurable projects," said Mr. Bashaw, 48, who, alongside his Cape Advisors partner Craig Wood, has combined an old Howard Johnson and Holiday Inn into a single 330-room boutique hotel on the boardwalk.  read more »

The esteemed and embattled Chelsea Hotel has yet another new manager.

Hotel blog Living With Legends has the scoop that former Hard Rock Hotel boss Andrew Tilley is taking over today, becoming the hallowed Bohemian enclave's third manager in just over a year.

Mr. Tilley replaces former corporate manager BD NY Hotels, the Richard Born and Ira Drukier-led outfit fired this past April after just 10 tumultous months in charge.

The previous manager, legendary hotelier Stanley Bard, had overseen the hotel's operations for nearly 50 years before his controversial dismissal last summer.

This reporter was witness to some tense moments at the Chelsea Hotel over the weekend, including a verbal confrontation (pictured above) at the front desk between hotel vice president David Elder and hotel tenant Arthur Nash.

No punches were thrown, but the incident clearly spooked Mr. Elder. In recent days, a new security detail has been patrolling the hotel’s lobby and hallways. The hulking guys in suits have been particularly attentive to Mr. Nash.

The initial standoff happened during the second night of a photography exhibit entitled “Chelsea Hotel Through the Eyes of The Photographers,” scheduled to coincide with the historic hotel's 125th anniversary. But it also came at a time of lingering tensions inside the iconic lodge.

Mr. Elder is at the center of the controversy. It was his 2005 lawsuit that ultimately resulted in the highly-publicized ouster of longtime manger and majority owner Stanley Bard. Thus, he has taken the brunt of some residents’ anger. “Greed” has been scrawled on his door; excrement left on his doormat—someone even sent him a dead fish in the mail. And, the hotel blog, Living With Legends, has fervently chronicled Mr. Elder’s longstanding California court battle with his elderly father-in-law, the writer Piri Thomas, over more than $1 million in dividends reaped from hotel profits.

“I’m not doing an interview,” Mr. Elder said on Saturday, mingling with guests just one night after he was chased from the exhibit hall by a masked doppelgänger dressed in a hotel bathrobe. (A stink bomb had earlier disrupted the show.)  read more »

It's been years since the famous Chelsea Hotel opened up its Grand Ballroom. On Friday, the doors will finally be unlocked for an exhibit of more than 100 photographs taken at or inspired by the 125-year-old artistic enclave.

The show, curated by Chelsea resident and photographer Linda Troeller with the help of hotel co-owner (and rumored interim manager) David Elder, opens May 9 and runs through Sunday, May 11, from noon to 6 p.m.

The exhibition comes at a pivotal time for the iconic-yet-embattled lodge, which saw its second management shakeup in less than a year last week.  read more »

BD NY Hotels, the Richard Born and Ira Drukier-led outfit hired last year to replace eccentric longtime Chelsea Hotel manager Stanley Bard, has filed for arbitration after being fired by the hotel's governing board for "willful misconduct."

The controversial management team, which installed a rookie, 26-year-old Glennon Travis in the place of the veteran manager, Mr. Bard, has claimed in court papers that it has "fully performed its obligations" under a three-year contract, signed last June, and further asserted that the hotel was more profitable on its watch than when Mr. Bard ran the place.  read more »

Rumors have been circulating for days about the looming departure of Glennon Travis, controversial manager of the embattled Chelsea Hotel.  read more »

Legendary hotelier Stanley Bard doesn't hang out in the lobby of his beloved Chelsea Hotel as often as he used to.

But, two weeks ago, the hotel's infamously ousted manager made a rare appearance, joining the director Milos Forman (himself a former hotel resident) for an on-camera interview smack-dab in the middle of the lobby.

"The new management comes running out of the back and is like, 'You can’t shoot that here!'" said the writer Ed Hamilton, a 13-year resident of the iconic lodge on West 23rd Street. "He tried to charge Stanley $600 to film in the lobby. Of course, Stanley wouldn't pay that."

Mr. Hamilton relayed the recent lobby incident during a panel discussion about the historic and embattled hotel last night at the Museum of the City of New York.

Mr. Hamilton, author of Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York’s Rebel Mecca, interviewed Mr. Bard himself recently for a short video by fellow hotel resident and filmmaker Sam Bassett.

In the interview, played during the panel discussion, Mr. Bard took a few jabs at the hotel's controversial new managers.  read more »

Legendary hotelier Stanley Bard will deliver a videotaped "message of hope" tonight at the Museum of the City of New York.

Hear what the charismatic former manager of the embattled Chelsea Hotel has been up to since his controversial ouster last summer, what he thinks about the new management and ongoing eviction proceedings, as well as his vision for the future of the iconic 125-year-old lodge, of which he remains the majority owner.

Mr. Bard's remarks will follow a panel discussion with preservationist Edward Kirkland and writers Ed Hamilton, author of the 2007 book Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York’s Rebel Mecca, and Sherill Tippins, author of the forthcoming Dream Palace: The Extraordinary Life of the Chelsea Hotel.

The event starts at 6:30.

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!”  read more »

Rule of the Infanta.

• Don't look now, but it's another New York magazine feature on kids and parents. This week, we learn about the irresistible lure of child-centric co-op marketing: at 10 West End Avenue, there's a version of the Children's Museum 's Playworks exhibit; at 170 East End Avenue, Peter Marino has designing 6,000-plus square feet of "amenities... for kids up to age 16"; you can find "nanny concierge" at Brooklyn's Court Street Lofts. (Goodbye, Brooklyn, we hardly knew thee.) (New York)
• So far this year, five companies have leased 100,000-square-foot spaces. Before November, nine others "are expected to sign leases of the same size." That somehow leaves only five midtown spaces of 100,000 square feet--and only six above 200,000 in the entire city. Where's Philip Johnson when you need him? (Crain's)
• But can big offices be defended? Empire State Building guards are trying to organize--their enemies have hired Howard Rubenstein, while the poor guards are being defended in the press by a Rabbi named Michael Feinberg. Does this mean we can't make out up there anymore? (City Limits)
• Hookers! Fires! Lawsuits! Warped staircases! Falling ceilings! Apartment (and hotel) owner Moses Fried increasingly looks like he deserved a place atop that lousy landlord list. But: "he's not a bad guy." (NY Daily News)
• Daily excuse to memorialize Dylan Thomas' heroic consumption of whiskey: The Hotel Chelsea's very own Capitol Fishing Trade, "the only bait and tackle shop in Manhattan," is moving to West 36th Street. Maybe the Garment District is really heating up after all? (New York Times)
- Max Abelson]]> http://www.observer.com/node/34972#comments Real Estate Brooklyn Daily News LP Hotel Chelsea The New York Times Company Mon, 24 Jul 2006 20:55:00 -0400 Observer Staff 34972 at http://www.observer.com