Ira Drukier, one of the owners, said the facade work is complete, although he said scaffolding and bridge construction on the sidewalk will remain until the city conducts an inspection. He said the refurbishment of the inside would be “100% complete” by the summer.
Chelsea currently has 155 hotel rooms, plus about 45 apartments for long-term tenants who have lived during the seemingly endless construction – and about two years when work was halted.
The renovation included the installation of new doors on the rooms to comply with city fire regulations. Old doors, salvaged by an old resident, was auctioned four years ago. And El Quijote, Spanish restaurant on the 1st floor closed in 2018reopened. Pete Wells, our restaurant reviewer, wrote last month that the “ancient-liberal axis of the city feared it would be destroyed or at least cleaned beyond recognition.”
“Most of those worries can be forgotten,” he says, and for food, “old recipes have been dropped, as they should have been.”
Upstairs, the president of the tenant association was happy, but the friction persisted. The Tenants Association represents about 40 longtime residents. Drukier and Zoe Pappas, its president, say they have been at odds with a number of others, and have had a series of charges and surcharges, lawsuits and administrative proceedings.
Leon Behar, an attorney for tenants who are in conflict with the owners, said last week that people in the building “still have hot water shortages/no hot water (running water for 30 minutes or more before when possible.” Drukier called that “untrue” and said the tenants who allege it “won’t let us in” to fix the problem.
Debbie Martin, another longtime tenant who said last year that conditions had deteriorated since construction restarted, last week reported that noise “has subsided somewhat on the floor of the house recently.” I”. However, she added via email that “my windows are blocked by boards, steel pipes and mesh, and basic services are still unreliable.”
