Sorry Marlene, We’re Just a Bunch of Dumb Artists Here

In a recent amNY article, Marlene Krauss  M.D., M.B.A., Pld, board member and mastermind of the hostile takeover of the Chelsea Hotel, seems to have finally put her finger on it when she says, “I think the tenants don’t understand what is happening, that this is all for their benefit.”   
    The diabolical Stanley was paying himself an exorbitant salary, she claims,  and while this may perhaps be true, I somehow doubt that replacing him with an entire corporation will save the hotel much in management costs.   And even if there are savings I somehow doubt that any of the residents will be getting rent reductions anytime soon.
     Thus, it remains a puzzle as to why BD hotels, which specializes in building boutique hotels – was hired, especially since Marlene says she has no intentions of “changing leases made under Bard, converting rooms to condos, or otherwise altering the hotel’s ambiance.”  Well, as we reported last week, it seems that some leases are already being challenged, that is, those belonging to tenants who have moved in since the first of the year.  (Some of them were sent letters informing them of their expected check-out date, among other shady tactics.)  As for the ambiance of the Chelsea, it has already been altered by the deployment of toadies such as David Elder to lay around the lobby and listen in whenever anybody tries to have a conversation.  We are also not too thrilled about the partitioning of the Grand Ballroom into office space.
     Oh, and as for David Elder, we now learn that the fish head he received was really just a goldfish head, which makes it seem rather less like the work of The Godfather than of Spanky and Alfalfa.  Soon we’ll learn that the “dog poop” left outside his door was really nothing but a sprinkling of rabbit pellets. – Ed Hamilton