As the coronavirus pandemic hit Los Angeles, the celebrity hotelier André Balazs laid off most of the Chateau Marmont’s staff. He followed up by announcing in July that the storied Hollywood hotel would become a private club by the end of the year.
Both of those decisions were met with considerable pushback. In June laid-off workers protested outside the hotel. “We were terminated during a pandemic and then our health care [benefits were] taken away,” Mike Racanelli, a former Chateau bellman, told Page Six. “We were left high and dry.”
Kurt Petersen, copresident of Unite Here Local 11, a union working with the laid-off staff, later told the tabloid, “The Chateau Marmont’s announcement that it will now call itself a private club does nothing to avoid its obligation to recall its longtime workers. It is a cynical ruse. We hope that no one joins this bogus club until the professional service workers who made the hotel rich and famous—most of whom are workers of color—are back in their jobs and are treated with respect.”
In a new interview with Variety published on Wednesday, Balazs said the only thing he did wrong was to implement the layoffs before other hoteliers. He did, however, seem to partially back away from the private-club measure.
“So the business plan, as it were, is to recognize more and more people would rather live in a hotel, which is not atypical,” he told the magazine. “I mean, this was also what the superwealthy did at the turn of the century. You’d have your country house, and then you’d have your suite at the Pierre or the Carlyle in New York, for example. And that was also true in London and in other places in Europe…Howard Hughes, who certainly had plenty of other places to live, also lived at the Chateau for periods of time.”
But he said the hotel will keep at least one of its restaurants open to nonmembers and likely rent out its lobby and garden for events. “Chateau Marmont is not going to be closed to the public,” Balazs said. “It’s not like we’re witnessing the closing of an era. What we’re witnessing is the opening of another era, where something that has always been private now just has an inner sanctum that’s even more private.”
In November 2017, three women accused Balazs of groping them in a New York Times investigation. A former Chateau receptionist, a media executive, and the actor Amanda Anka described similar incidents where Balazs grabbed their crotches. A spokesperson for Anka confirmed the story to the Times and described his behavior as “outrageous and vile,” adding that “his actions were dealt with at the time.” Balazs has not publicly responded to the accusations.
“I’ve never viewed myself as the owner of the Chateau,” Balazs told Variety. “I’m the custodian of an institution.
“It’s almost safe to say, I think, that the Chateau Marmont has become somehow a living embodiment of Hollywood and a symbol of Hollywood,” he continued, “even more powerful than the Hollywood sign itself.”
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