Sex, Noise, and Garbage: How Ian Schrager’s Rowdy Public Hotel is Ruining Life for Many

Open for about two months, Ian Schrager’s glamorous Public Hotel has already made enemies with the very building to which it owes its existence. Sex, noise, and garbage are the operative words here.

Located at the perimeter of the 28-story Public Hotel, the Section 8 housing complex at 10 Stanton Street signed a compact in 2012 with the team that predated Schrager which helped move the project forward. It was a Catch-22 deal with the devil – support the project to extend government protections for another two decades. Now, residents have a proverbial front-row seat to not just any ordinary quality-of-life concerns. Most controversial, there are complaints that hotel guests are apparently banging in plain sight, with the curtains open.

“People are seeing people having sex — they don’t even close their blinds,” Debbie Gonzalez of the 10 Stanton Tenants Association told DNAinfo. “There are 44 apartments in that back, and these people are subjected to noise, nudity, smoking — it’s ridiculous.”

However, the X-rated peep shows in the hotel rooms are the least of the neighbors’ concerns.

Boisterous revelers queue for a chance to experience the “vibrant and energetic ‘crazy bar’” that “floats” on the building’s rooftop. (That hangout is one of five inside 215 Chrystie Street.) Entrance to The Roof, as its called, is in the narrow parking lot alleyway that sits adjacent to 10 Stanton Street. Addressing concerns of being in an echo chamber, the hotel did construct a tent contraption, yet residents say it doesn’t mitigate anything. For the record, there have been 47 complaints at the Public Hotel since its June 6 opening, cited for loud music, partying, and loud talking, according to 311.

Their other concerns include staff allegedly leaving trash bins steps from residents’ windows, the opportunistic rats that follow with a feeding frenzy, and loss of parking spaces.

Regarding the latter, the tenant association says that they lent parking spaces for commercial use during construction with the understanding that they would be returned after the hotel opened. Not so. They’re still waiting, crying foul that vendors and visitors (like this Bentley) monopolize spaces promised to 10 Stanton Street.

“We are tired and feel as though this big corporation thinks we are the little people, and that they can squash us by not complying with complaints we have made,” board member Deborah Gonzalez tells us. “They do what they want, but this is our home. Public is a money making business, our tenants are anxious, losing sleep, high blood pressure, angry at the way we are being treated.”

And then there is this interesting network of wiring running from 10 Stanton Street to the Public Hotel.

“Why is it that we have wiring running from our basement over to the Public Hotel,” Gonzalez asks. “Who’s paying this Con Edison bill?”