News from
Owners of Chelsea Hotel harassed tenants during
renovations, NYC alleges
BY GABRIEL SANDOVAL
THE CITY
Unsafe conditions inside the historic
Chelsea Hotel, caused by years of renovations,
amounted to tenant harassment,
city attorneys argued in a Manhattan
courtroom Monday.
During a city administrative hearing in
a case against hotel owner Ira Drukier,
Department of Housing Preservation and
Development lawyers cited evidence of
hazards wrought by the effort to turn the
grimy landmark to an upscale hotel with
a rooftop lounge.
On Friday, city attorneys rattled off a
slew of building and health violations —
including a leaky ceiling, exposed electrical
wires and an analysis of dust revealing
high lead levels.
“The list was extensive,” Joseph Ventour,
a city Department of Buildings
assistant commissioner, testified Friday.
He said he visited the hotel twice in
2019 and identified numerous building
code violations.
HPD argued that the hotel’s owners
should not be granted a “Certificate of
No Harassment” required during conversions
of residential hotels into apartments.
The owners would need the document to
resume work on the building.
Renovations have halted several times
due to DOB stop work orders. Public records
indicate there’s currently a partial
stop work order on the hotel, meaning
that only safety improvement efforts
could proceed.
One of the owners’ attorneys, Jennifer
Recine, said they want the tenants, however
unhappy, to stay.
“There was no intent to harass,” she
said in her opening remarks on Friday
before Judge Noel Garcia.
Years of Construction
Some tenants tell a different story.
Susan Berg, who’s lived at the hotel
for 33 years, said the place used to be
beautiful.
But then renovations began in about
2011 under a previous owner. Seven or
eight years ago, leaks in the ceiling caused
flooding in the building, including inside
her 10th floor apartment. Hallways were
blanketed by water, she said.
“We have to walk through in order to
get to our apartments or elevator,” she
told THE CITY.
But that was only one of many problems
— including mold, lack of heat, no
water, no hot water, dust, vermin and gas
shut-offs — that she and her husband,
Jonathan Berg, himself a resident since
1975, said they’ve endured.
Matthew Creegan, an HPD spokesperson,
said that after the owners applied
for the no-harassment certificate in 2019,
the agency followed protocol and began
investigating.
The probe included checking with
current and former tenants, local groups,
the area community board and elected
officials.
HPD found “reasonable cause” that
tenant harassment had occurred, and
referred the findings to the Office of
Administrative Trials and Hearings,
Creegan said.
He added that HPD will make its final
determination after the trial.
“We are working on multiple fronts
to protect New York City tenants from
harassment, and when we find evidence
that tenants are at risk, we will continue
to do everything within our power to
protect them,” Creegan said.
Berg said that after the HPD’s investigation
began, conditions improved
slightly.
“They started to at least focus on not
having leaks in people’s apartments all
the time,” she said.
Glory Days
The iconic Chelsea Hotel is long-past
its glory days when it served as a crash
pad for a string of legends, from Leonard
Cohen to Janis Joplin. The Sex Pistols’
Sid Vicious allegedly killed his girlfriend,
Nancy Spungen, in a room at the Chelsea
in 1978.
Other former residents run the gamut
from Jack Kerouac to Madonna to Arthur
C. Clarke, who reportedly wrote “2001:
A Space Odyssey” there. The West 23rd
Street building made the National Register
of Historic Places in 1977.
Last year, THE CITY reported that the
owners had sought the no-harassment
certificate from HPD to continue construction
as they directed political contributions
to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who
was then considering a presidential run.
Drukier and hotel co-owner Richard
Born steered tens of thousands to de
Blasio’s political action committees, and
hosted a fundraiser that raised $90,000.
At the time, a spokesperson for de Blasio
said the mayor takes no money from anyone
listed on a city database of entities
doing business with the city.
But that database, listing only execs
PHOTO: GABRIEL SANDOVAL/THE CITY
at firms involved in city contracts and
certain other transactions, is far from
complete. The Chelsea Hotel owners, for
example, aren’t on it, even with their request
for a certification of no-harassment
pending.
An Owner’s View
On Friday, Drukier said that HPD has
taken an unreasonable approach by holding
up construction.
“Look, our only objective is to try to
finish the building and get the tenants
living in a nice environment, safe environment,
and this just prevents that,” he
told THE CITY. “I don’t know how this
helps the tenants and I don’t know how
this helps anybody. I don’t know how this
helps the city.”
Drukier denied that he harassed anybody,
and noted that tenants were suing
the owners.
“I’ve never harassed a tenant in my
life,” Drukier said. “Do I get angry
sometimes? Sure, but I’ve never harassed
anybody. I’ve tried every which way to
accommodate those tenants.”
This story was published on March 9,
2020 by THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit
news organization dedicated to hardhitting
reporting that serves the people of
New York. Read more at THECITY.nyc.
Schneps Media March 12, 2020 9