Retail

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 »

Luke and his fiancé are getting married at the Foundry in Long Island City this weekend. Like many of the New York couples tying the knot in this uncertain economic climate, they are still going all out for the big day. “We just said, ‘Let’s hang the cost because it’s only going to happen once right,'” said the British native.

His American-born fiancée’s parents have thrown in $30,000 from their 401(k) to help foot the bill for the 125-person reception. The newlyweds will cap off the celebration with a two-week honeymoon in Bali, which Luke just bought new scuba gear for.

Based on reports from about a dozen of the city's bridal retailers, the economic slump has done little to dilute the appetite for lavish weddings. Like Manhattan's luxury real estate market, the wedding industry here not only appears to be impervious to a recession, but also has been buoyed by Europeans taking advantage of the almighty euro.  read more »

According to the Fed, sky-rocketing fuel costs and a shaky job market have not stopped Americans from spending. The April Commerce Report released in Washington today said U.S. consumers spent more than twice what economists had forecast, excluding car sales, Bloomberg reported.

A 0.2 percent overall drop in retail spending--led by the auto industry's 2.8 percent decline--in the first quarter of the year coupled with better-than-expected sales at discount chain Wal-Mart indicate that consumers are flocking to discount stores and holding out on purchases of big-ticket items.  read more »

Merle Gross-Ginsberg recalled a dinner hosted by the Real Estate Board of New York back in 1975, where she, Leona Helmsley and one other woman were grossly outnumbered by some 1,800 men—"all smoking the most enormous cigars you've ever seen," she said.

The industry's vast gender gap has slowly begun to close in recent years. Yet, even at the Association of Real Estate Women's 30th Anniversary gala at the Mandarian Oriental Hotel at Time Warner Center on Thursday night, males still dominated the crowd by about 2 to 1. Maybe even 3 to 1.  read more »

NY1 is reporting that Woodhaven Lanes in Forest Hills will shutter May 18 because of high rent:

The owners of the property had asked for a rent decrease, but the management company said they could not accommodate because of their mortgage costs. A last-ditch effort to find a new lease holder was rejected by the bank.  read more »

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Activists targeted hotelier Hank Freid last week as the focal point for their campaign against illegal hotel conversions citywide, calling the much-maligned developer a "scamlord" and picketing his Broadway Hotel this past Saturday.

Mr. Freid's lawyer chimed in this week to make a point -- those hotels aren't actually illegal:  read more »

Embattled Scores owner Richard Goldring is suing the city and State Liquor Authority (S.L.A.) in federal court, alleging that the government's recent crackdown on his two Manhattan strip clubs violates his First Amendment rights.

In court papers, his latest attorney called last month's revocation of Mr. Goldring's liquor license at Scores West "a circumstance intended to terminate in Scores West any future First Amendment expressive entertainment and to chill the principals of Scores East and Scores West in the exercise of their First Amendment right to provide such entertainment."  read more »

Hermès, the French luxury brand that birthed the Birkin bag and all sorts of other status symbols, announced that global sales rose 13.4 percent to 415.1 million euros—that’s $642.9 million now, ouch!—year-over-year in the first three months of 2008.

Surprisingly, gains were felt on both sides of the Atlantic, with U.S. sales rising 23 percent annually in the first quarter. Even more suprising is that the banner performance of Hermès’ Wall Street branch drove up the numbers, WWD reports.  read more »

Despite the truckloads of statistics floating around lately indicating that U.S. consumer confidence is plummeting (not to mention the millions of tax rebate checks in the mail), the city’s retailers seem convinced that New Yorkers will continue to shop, recession or not.

Monday brought a flood of new retail news, some of it reflective of the economic slump and some less so.  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 »

Activists plan to rally at noon on Saturday outside controversial hotelier Hank Freid's Broadway Studios on the Upper West Side to "denounce the continued operation of illegal hotels" by "scamlords" citywide.

"We are targeting Hank Freid as an egregious illegal hotelier ... with a particularly insidious past," organizer Yarrow Willman-Cole told The Observer.

Mr. Freid earned the dubious distinction as one of New York City's "Worst Landlords" after contracting with the government to provide housing for homeless persons living with HIV/AIDS at his hotels amid hard economic times, then evicting those tenants to make way for upcale renovations once the economy rebounded.  read more »

Protesters and politicans plan to rally in Chelsea on Saturday against the displacement of a handful of small businesses on Ninth Avenue by landlord Morris Monian.

Eight stores along what organizers are calling “the last ungentrified block in Chelsea” —including Chelsea Liquors, the Ninth Avenue Gift Shop, Sweet Banana Candy Store, New Barber Shop and Famous Deli—have between three months and two years before their lease expires.

Organizers said the shops cater directly to residents of the Fulton Houses affordable housing complex across the street.  read more »

Owners of One Hanson Place appear to have lowered by 30 percent the price of the landmarked banking hall at the bottom of Brooklyn's tallest and most glamourous building.  read more »

After a lengthy legal fight, ravenous hotel developer Sam Chang has apparently given up his plan to tear down the old Pussycat Lounge at 96 Greenwich Street.

Mr. Chang has agreed to sell the ancient, circa-1799 building to Pussycat owner Robert Kremer for $2.5 million, according to city records -- that's $1 million less than Mr. Chang paid for it in 2005.  read more »

At least two former Manhattan Mall retailers have sued landlord Steve Roth's Vornado Realty Trust over their recent evictions from the mall to make way for a new 150,000-square-foot J.C. Penney department store.

Proprietors of Pretzel Time and Square One Shoes & Clothing each claim in separate lawsuits that their leases were prematurely and illegally terminated last month.  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 »

You know things are tight when the good people start to forgo their daily caffeine fix, but it appears not even Starbucks has been spared from the drop in consumer spending. With profits down 28 percent, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced the company has cut the number of U.S. branches it plans to open this year from 1,175 to 1,020 and will open fewer than 400 from 2009 through 2011, The New York Times reports today.  read more »

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

We've got good news for the die-hard fashionistas who had been plotting a lunch-time run on Bloomingdale's today before a possible strike tomorrow. It's been averted (for the time being at least)!

Womens' Wear Daily reported today that the management of the 59th Street flagship reached a deal with leaders of the Local 3 branch of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that "eliminates any possibility of a strike being called against the retailer."  read more »

A panel of appellate judges has rejected the New York Restaurant Association's latest motion to delay enforcement of the city's new calorie posting rule.

“With today's decision, McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, and the other big chains that haven't yet listed calories as required by the Health Code have run out of stalling tactics," Health Commissioner Thomas Freiden said in a statement.  read more »

The book to the right landed in our mailbox on Monday afternoon. It's called Greenopia, New York City, Eat, Shop, Live Green; and it's a new guide to over 1,300 restaurants, shops and other resources throughout the city.

And not to worry: the book, published by The Green Media Group (really), promises that "each business and organization is independently researched and rated based on Greenopia's unique Green-Leaf Award system..."

Hunkier-than-thou hotelier Andre Balazs has closed on the sale of Hotel QT for a handsome $82 million.

The deal appeared in public records today, though Crain's New York apparently broke the news, with nary a splash, last week.  read more »

The champagne room has finally gone dry at embattled Manhattan strip club Scores West.

The New York Post reports that authorities from the New York State Liquor Authority (S.L.A.) showed up Wednesday to confiscate the voluptuous 10,000-square-foot venue's precious liquor license.

(Albeit apparently not before getting a visit from reality TV couple Alex and Simon McCord of "The Real Housewives of New York City" fame.)

The agency's action follows a prolonged legal battle with club management over the arrests of several Scores West employees on prostitution charges in January 2007.  read more »

It's budget chic in Chinatown!

Developer Derek Law will build a 12-story, 43-room "boutique-style hotel" on Allen Street, between Canal and Division streets, with plans to welcome guests in 2010.

Mr. Law, who submitted the permit to the Buildings Department today, has built one another hotel, a Howard Johnson in Flushing, Queens.

"We are going to emphasize the décor of the rooms and our guest service," said Mr. Law, of the yet-unnamed Chinatown inn.

Mr. Law said that high-end service won't come with a Penninsula-size price tag: "It will be like economy or mid-market."  read more »

If there's anything more symbolic of a neighborhood's gentrification, well, we can' t think of it: Nam's grocery on Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights is going organic, according to Brooklynian.com.  read more »

A new city rule requiring chain restaurants to post the calorie content of their menu items actually takes effect on Friday, April 25--not today, as other news outlets are reporting.  read more »

Still reeling from the fallout of its highly publicized 2007 prostitution bust, embattled Manhattan strip club Scores West has filed for bankruptcy.

Court papers filed on Friday point to "mounting tax debt" and a "loss in sales" at the voluptuous 10,000-square-foot venue at 536 W. 28th St. "as a result of the actions by the New York State Liquor Authority proceeding against the [club] to revoke its liquor license."  read more »

Hotelier to the masses Sam Chang continues to retrench amidst market turmoil, selling a Financial District lot to Magna Hospitality for $60 million, according to a report in The Real Deal.  read more »

"This is a venue with a lot of history," said Tom Morello, the Harlem-born guitarist for political rock-rap group Rage Against The Machine, standing onstage at 315 Bowery early Friday morning. He was referring to CBGB, the legendary rock club that used to occupy that address.

"We can take it higher than it's ever been before," said Mr. Morello, who was joined onstage by a number of big-name musicians, including Jerry Cantrell, Perry Farrell and an openly smoking-ban-flouting Slash, in celebrating the grand reopening of the hallowed music hall. Concerts like these will happen only occassionally now, however, as the venue has become a high-end rock-themed clothing boutique.

"We're gonna jump the fuck up and down," Mr. Morello told the packed crowd, many of whom had shelled out $75 per ticket to attend the charity concert, which also included performances by Ronnie Spector, Ian Hunter and Joan Jett. "I wanna see everybody jump," he said, including "the guy selling $300 T-shirts."

That guy was John Varvatos, the fashion designer who now operates the former CBGB space.  read more »

It’s too early to tell how many out-of-towners will come to the city for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit, but everyone from pedicab drivers to butchers are clamoring for a piece of the pope-tourism pie.

Though only 57,000 tickets are available for the pontiff’s mass at Yankee Stadium, the city’s official tourism company NYC & Co. is expecting “people from around the country, and international visitors, to come and experience the papal visit as well,” said agency spokesperson Tiffany Townsend.

In anticipation of the hordes, all kinds of businesses are whipping out pope-related products or deals to appeal to the devoutly Catholic. Or devoutly kitsch.  read more »

Demonstrators who picketed the new John Varvatos boutique on the Bowery last week plan a second wave of protests tonight, as the fashion designer celebrates the store's grand opening with a splashy charity concert.

The shop is located on the site of the former legendary rock club CBGB, which shuttered in 2006 after a lengthly rent dispute with its landlord.

"We'll have more humorous (and pointed) neon pink signs..." e-mailed activist Rebecca Moore, who last week carried a placard reading "ONE 'SMALL' LOSS OF A MUSIC SPACE, ONE LARGE STEP FOR PANTS."

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Nearly five years in the making (and just a few years off its originally-planned 2005 opening), Swedish retailer IKEA's 346,000-square-foot store on the Brooklyn waterfront will finally open on June 18, the company announced today.

"We made excellent progress on construction last year and so far this spring, so we are confident the remaining construction milestones and interior build-up process will be complete by mid-June," said store manager Mike Baker in a statement.  read more »

The dismal performance of the New York Knicks has hurt the fan-fueled business of Irish pubs near Madison Square Garden, according to the Sunday Times.  read more »

Coney Island merchants sent out a terse press release Friday afternoon in response to "an ominous fence which is obstructing the entrances to an entire block of businesses on the boardwalk."

The Parks Department, which erected the fence a day earlier, issued the following explanation via email to The Observer:

The Parks Department is currently doing maintenance work along the boardwalk including the area between West 12th Street and Stillwell Avenue to reinforce its support structures and repair decking material. The affected areas will be repaired or replaced, and fencing will be removed, prior to the start of the busy beach season. While we regret any inconvenience this may present to adjacent business owners, safer structures will be a benefit in the long run and, in the meantime, we are preserving access wherever possible.

Seaside merchants have long complained about the sorry state of Coney Island's rickety boardwalk.

And some say the city's latest attempt to address the situation isn't really helping:

"Instead of fixing the boardwalk in front of the businesses that go from Stillwell [Avenue] to 12th Street, the Parks Department decided to build this enormous barricade in front of all our stores," said Dianna Carlin, owner of the Lola Starr Souvenir Boutique. "So now all of our businesses are completely blocked in by this wall, which they say will be there all summer."

 

Money's tight and your credit card's maxed out. You're stressed and it's starting to show. Get a $50 dollar facial in Manhattan--and we're not talking about Chinatown. From April 14 to 20, you can slough your troubles (and dead skin cells away) at Spa Week 2008. About 100 spas in Manhattan and at least one in each of the outer boroughs are offering $50 discounted treatments on everything from acupuncture and teeth whitening, to massages and waxing.  read more »

Hotelier Hank Freid can't live on Starbucks alone.

So he's installing a new Thai restaurant at his refurbished Marrakech Hotel at Broadway and 103rd Street.

Mr. Freid has enlisted the proprietors of pad-thai palaces Klong in East Village and Room Service in Chelsea to open a new 1,200-square-foot eatery called Sookk.

Meaning "happiness" in Thai, Sookk will specialize in cuisine inspired by the Yaowarat District, which is Bangkok's version of Chinatown, according to a press release.

“Sookk is in keeping with the unique and eclectic quality that the hotel is known for,” Mr. Freid said in a statement.

With Merrill Lynch staying put downtown and plans to redevelop Penn Station in flux, Vornado CEO Steven Roth may not know what to do with the Hotel Pennsylvania--a building the company once described as "a placeholder, sort of like a parking lot."

In the meantime, the historic lodge continues to make his company some big bucks--netting roughly $37.9 million last year.

That's $10.6 million more than in 2006, according to the company's latest filing with federal regulators, which further added, "This property continues to trend higher in 2008."

With revenues on the rise, does it still make sense to raze it?  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.  read more »

It seems the control freaks running Robert De Niro's new Greenwich Hotel aren't only cracking down on camera-equipped spectators.

On opening day, management also kicked out a reviewer for the hospitality industry site Hotel Chatter, abruptly canceling her reservation.

And she wasn't even requesting a cheap press rate! To wit:

we had a room booked at the Greenwich Hotel tonight. Juliana was going to stay there. In fact, she was excited to stay there.

However, our credit card was flagged by the hotel, Focker style, and we were informed this weekend that we needed to agree not to publish any images that resulted from our hotel stay. Long story short, the hotel has an embargo on photos with some international publication with a long lead time, how archaic is that?