‘Pushed’ out of our Chelsea Hotel pad
Couple sues over renovation ‘harassment’
A family has been forced to move out of their apartment at the historic Chelsea Hotel after renovations left them without electricity or running water for two years, a lawsuit alleges.
Artist Philip Taaffe and his wife, Gretchen Carlson, are the latest rent-stabilized tenants to sue the new owners of the fabled bohemian haunt on West 23rd Street over allegedly shoddy conditions, which they say are part of a harassment campaign to push them out.
Ira Drukier bought the building in 2016, and complaints and lawsuits from at least seven tenants have interrupted the Victorian building’s makeover, NY1 previously reported.
Taaffe, an abstract painter, and his wife and three sons, ages 11, 13 and 16, had to leave their three-bedroom apartment, once the home of composer Virgil Thomson, due to the conditions, according to their Manhattan Supreme Court suit. It was not clear when the couple relocated.
“Defendants have engaged in deliberate and continuing acts of harassment and vandalism in the apartments that have destroyed plaintiffs’ residence,” the suit charges.
The family has been without refrigeration and an operable kitchen sink and bathroom toilets, the court papers state. There has also been no heat in the apartment since the fall of 2019.
Workers ran three metal waste lines through the couple’s walk-in closet in 2018 and drilled two large holes in the living-room ceiling. The family has had to endure constant dust and water leaks, the papers allege.
Despite repeated requests, the Chelsea Hotel’s owners have refused to remedy the conditions, according to the filing.
The couple is seeking a rent reduction, punitive damages and attorneys’ fees.
The famed hotel’s residents have included Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac and Sid Vicious, who was charged with stabbing his girlfriend to death in 1978 in one of its rooms. The building is being turned into a luxury hotel and condos, but the renovation that started about a decade ago has been mired in financial and legal woes.
Tenants sued Drukier over the seemingly endless construction, resulting in a stop-work order, but others staged a demonstration this year demanding the restoration to continue.
A lawyer for the hotel didn’t immediately return a request for comment.