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Chelsea Hotel Hit With Stop-Work Orders for Lacking Tenant-Protection Plans

By Maya Rajamani | January 24, 2017 5:55pm
 The Chelsea Hotel.
The Chelsea Hotel.
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Flickr/andrewmalone

CHELSEA — The new owners of the Chelsea Hotel have been hit with a series of stop-work orders after failing to provide accurate plans as they move forward with a redevelopment of the legendary lodge.

The city’s Department of Buildings on Friday issued stop-work orders for nine jobs at the hotel after discovering information in submitted plans “did not accurately reflect the existing conditions at the building,” a DOB spokesman said Tuesday.

“The permitted jobs were missing tenant protection plan details for a number of units in the building, and the layout of an existing common bathroom was not reflected accurately on the plans,” the spokesman added.

A trio of hoteliers including BD Hotels co-founder Richard Born recently purchased the property at 222 W. 23rd St., with plans to redevelop it into condos and hotel space.

On Tuesday, Born said he couldn’t comment on the stop-work orders.

“I’m not involved in day-to-day [at the hotel],” he said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

The latest action comes less than four months after the DOB issued a partial stop-work order because demolition on the hotel’s eighth floor was making the area “dangerous” for its remaining tenants, records show.

The department received a 311 complaint reporting the issue at the end of September, the spokesman said.

The city also issued a stop-work order in July due to an “inadequate tenant protection plan on the 12th floor,” The Real Deal reported.

Despite the delays, Born told the outlet in October that he expected renovations at the site to wrap up by 2018.

“We believe that we’ve made peace with virtually every tenant," he said at the time. "There are maybe two or three tenants who are still having issues."

The owners will now have to amend their plans for work to proceed, the DOB spokesman said.