Real estate developer and hotelier Ian Reisner has signed a lease to take over the former Playboy Club site and the Cachet Boutique Hotel New York City. Plans are to turn the building on West 42nd Street into a gay-friendly hotel, restaurant and nightclub, Sidedish has learned.
The 105-room hotel, located at 510 W. 42nd St. between 10th and 11th avenues, closed last October after six years in business.
The Playboy Club came under fire in 2019 after only being open for a year.
Reisner said he is currently in talks with Axel Hotel Brands, which bills itself as the world’s largest LGBTQI+ hotel chain, to operate the hotel, but cautioned that the conversations are fluid.
“I’m at the Axel Hotel in South Beach right now,” Reisner told Side Dish in a phone interview this week.
The West 42nd St. space will include a 7,500-square-foot restaurant and common area and will be open for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night dining, Reisner said.
There will also be a 14,000 square foot nightclub with an “experiential supper club” and basement lounge space.
The hotel will open soon.
The remaining facilities, including a 3,000-square-foot small restaurant that will be an “experiential supper club,” are awaiting a liquor license this summer or fall before opening, officials said.
One person added that Reisner is “in talks” to bring big-name brands into the restaurant space. There is also the possibility of an employee-only restaurant and mixology bar. A 750-square-foot basement speakeasy that could seat about 100 people is also being considered. It features “banquettes, high-top tables, a bar and thick marble.”
This is a return for Mr. Reisner, who co-founded the gay-friendly Out New York Hotel on the same property in 2012, which he called the city’s “new all-singing, all-dancing gay hotel.” It was
The hotel and Reisner were ahead of their time and eventually Boycotted by the gay community in 2015Reisner invited then-Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who opposed same-sex marriage, to dinner at his home.
“We were put out of business,” Reisner said.
Sources said Syed Reisner also received death threats at the time.
The Cachet Boutique New York Hotel and Playboy Club, which came next, also didn’t do well despite a $3 million renovation.
“Basically they mistimed it by 20 years,” Reisner said. “The Playboy Club’s name was offensive. She opened it in 2018 during the #MeToo movement. We cannot put women in a second-class position.”
Mr. Reisner added, “The hotel failed for another reason: it chose a terrible name. The Cachet Boutique Hotel. I don’t say it, I just have it.”
When Reisner previously owned Out Hotel, the restaurant was known as KTCHN and operated from 2012 to 2017.
During that time, the nightclub operated as XL, but in 2017 it changed ownership, converted to the Playboy Club, morphed into nightclub 42 Dolls, and closed in December 2022.
Twelve years later, the neighborhood has changed dramatically. Benefiting from new development and the all-new Hudson Yards project, it has been transformed from a barren wasteland into a thriving area of the city filled with people who live, work, eat, and shop there.
“The area is much more vibrant now,” says Ariel Palitz, a global government and hospitality consultant who was the first director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Nightlife.
“Theoretically [launching a gay-friendly hotel in the ‘hood is] This is a good and important idea, executed properly and hopefully positive. In a city full of hotels, especially now that we’re seeing the rollback of gay rights and all rights, there’s room for a hotel that caters specifically to gay patrons and their culture and provides a safe and fun place for them. There is. ” Palitz said.
Reisner agreed. “It’s much better now,” Reisner said. “Developers keep developing there. Before we were struggling. There was nothing. Now it’s all Hudson Yards, a vibrant area and neighborhood.”
