Cooper Square Hotel: Drama! Poaching! Park!
Oh, the Cooper Square Hotel, 21 (we hear 21, now!) floors of fun and intrigue on the Bowery. After a recent post about the hotel's three humongoid entertainment venues, we received some dish. First up, the hoteliers: The Peck Moss Group is no longer. The board two weeks ago decided to be done with Gregory Peck, one half of the partnership. (Let's call it a permanent Roman holiday! Ha!) Reason? In the words of one, "He's a huge douchebag." Fair enough.
Happily or sadly, this in no way affects the development of the hotel. Speaking of which! As mentioned, there will be a couple of restaurants, but the main one will most likely be done by LA's Table 8's Govind Armstrong. No word of whether they'll be importing the whole restaurant or simply poaching its chef.
The GM of the enterprise is going to be Klaus Ortlieb, the man who opened THOR and before that toiled away under Ian Schrager's watch. Speaking of which, the new hotel will boast its own private park, along the lines of Schrager's Gramercy Park Hotel, which has access to Gramercy Park for its guests—but without those annoying hoity-toity neighbors who think for some crazy reason that the park belongs to them.