December 24, 2024 • 42 mins
Considering his ownership of some of the world’s most renowned hotels—Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, Chiltern Firehouse in London, and The Standard in New York, among others—it’s somewhat surprising that André Balazs wasn’t always in the hotel business. The Boston-born Cornell and Columbia graduate actually began his career in biotech, co-founding a company called Biomatrix with his father in the late 1980s. It was a huge financial success, but Balazs felt as though his work life was infringing on his personal life, and wanted to find a way to reconcile the two. What better way to do that than running a hotel? After establishing The Mercer Hotel in SoHo, Balazs built out a fleet of idiosyncratic, abundantly stylish, and much beloved hotels. On this week’s episode of "Table for Two," the hotelier joins host Bruce Bozzi to discuss his design philosophy, the most challenging aspect of his job, and his close relationship with Andy Warhol.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, everybody, thanks for pulling up a cheer on Table
for two. This is Bruce and we are in Hollywood. However,
we're not at the Tower. We're a block down from
the tower. Tonight, we're having dinner in someone's home. One
could say that.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I think the casion calls for vesper. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Oh I like this.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
A man who created one of the most beautiful, mysterious
hotels in Los Angeles called the Chateau. Oh my god,
look at this, cheers salt. It's not our date night,
we're just having just a warm This would be mister
(00:45):
Andrea Balaz. He's responsible for such hotels as the Mercer
in New York, Chiltern Firehouse in London, a multitude of experiences,
his attention to details unrivaled, his elegance unmatched. So sit back, enjoy,
because we're going.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
To go deep with Andre.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I'm Rus Bassi and this is my podcast Table for two. Okay,
this is so exciting to me. Everybody, if you've pulled
up a chair tonight, this is very really special, my friend,
because we are in Hollywood, at the most glamorous place
(01:28):
undeniably in Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
That you have created.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
It is not where we often find ourselves and we're
sitting with the empresario, the king, the master of experience
and hotels and so much more. So we're going to
talk about that, mister Andrea blaz Welcome. So this was
the chateau moment was your first property.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
But you it's strange in one year, you know, I
was in the biotech business before. I having sort of
a serial entrepreneurs I started started newspapers, not school papers,
but newspapers in college with some partners, and I started
other businesses. Then I started biotech business. I did that
for a while. I didn't like the way my life
(02:14):
was bifurcated between my personal life and work life. So
after the company public, you know, I thought, you know,
what would be an interesting thing where basically I couldn't
distinguish the difference between work and play.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
This being a perfect example of it.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Wow, right, we're here where friends, we've been friends for
a long time. We happen to be doing a podcast.
Is sort of a business of yours. We're talking sort
of about a business mind. But I couldn't tell you,
you know, if this if we were paying for this
meal and and someone said, did you just have a
business meeting or did you have a personal meeting. I
(02:57):
wouldn't be able to say what it was. Yeah, And
that was the goal, just blend everything. So that's how
I got into it. And in nineteen ninety just happened
to be a year that I bought the building that
then became the Mercer, and I was here staying as
we started a nightclub called BC down Road that we
(03:19):
never got licensed because it got so much advanced hype that.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
The city said no, Yeah, but I tried to salvage it.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Right. So I was here, I was staying of the Chateau,
and I realized there's something about this place. So I
ended up buying this building the same year as I
bought the building in nineteen ninety. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So I like how you started that by saying creating
the letting go of the bifurcation that we all are
basically trained to think that you have to live your
life up work, home, workplay or separate as opposed to
bringing them together.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
And it's been a mission in my life to sort
of obliterate that line. Yeah, so that everything is play
or everything is work, but the whole idea of work
is that it should be something you like doing so
much that's not considered work.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Right, and the irony of what you're talking about is undeniably.
This business, I think is one of the hardest businesses
to work at.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
What you would know, Yes, I spent years and difficult many.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And on a multitude of levels, so to be able
to sort of kind of understand how to bring those
two together.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
You know what you do, so the chateau. So if
we kind of just take that beat in your life.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So for those of you who are who have pulled
up a sure today, the mercy of New York which
and the chateau they you know, having that vision I
think is really fascinating that you saw the beauty of that,
You saw the beauty of the sort of the symmetry
of to central downtown Soho, New York, which was a
(05:02):
sexy it.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
And when I look when I recently came, I've been
looking through a building an upstate New York, a place
up there, and we've been collecting, just working on a
book sort of called the Ship We've Done.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
This working title, right, is a great title, The Ship
We've done.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
The Ship We've done it.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Now, this is a very collaborative business and there's always
a week, there's no eye. And I came across this,
this box that was sort of a mailer to introduce
the mercer, and I realized, you know, it's hard to
imagine today when every city in the world has a Soho,
but back then I had to it was it was
(05:47):
an old fashioned hotel bell and I had to go
to Nasau and get a satellite picture because I wanted.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
No one knew where Soho was, so the.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Idea was this mailer was that it would see to
pick the little button at the top of the the
bell popped through Soho because no one knew where Soba
was in Manhattan when I bought that building, which was
the Astor family's headquarters, which is why it had sort
of more elegance to it than all its neighbors.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
They were in a fur trapping business.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
A mercer is someone who cleans furs, hence the name
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And we.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
But the biggest concern was that no one knew where
it was, and if they didn't know where it was,
whether it was sleep there because it was. There were
two restaurants, Raoul's being one of these, stood there. Another
one was a place called Food That's not there. I remember,
and there was there was forget retail, there was nothing.
(06:49):
There was art galleries and literally I lived on the
top floor of this loft buildings or walk up because
the four floors blow me was occupied by a rag business.
They collected rags and sent them out to JFK to
clean airplane parts. I kid you not, that's what that's
(07:11):
the soho that the mercer was born into.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
It's it couldn't imagine what it is transformation.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
In essence, by acquiring that real estate, bringing your vision,
you changed the whole.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
The neighborhood, neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
How does that all work together? And why doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Scare you or why you know just say, wait a minute,
I'm going to do this, but like there's no one
down here.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Well, the good thing is I started everything young enough.
When you know things are being scared, don't don't occur
to you.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
You just kind of do it.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
So this a lot to be said for not need today.
You can call it ballsy later on, but that's retrospective
and there's no option right exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
And you buy a building.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
In a shitty neighborhood because that's what you can afford
to buy. So the fact that it then becomes the
most expensive neighborhood in Manhattan.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
Is not.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
It's a result of this, but it certainly it's like
the standard that we built over the high Line.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
The only reason I was.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Able to build that, and that's the unfortunately, the only
hotel that I had the good fortune.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
To be able to build from ground up.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Everything else has been a conversion of some other building,
like a warehouse, like the Mercer. But that building we're
able to do because nobody wanted the real estate. You know,
at that time, everybody was demanding that the high Line
be torn down. I just happened to know a bunch
of artists and you know, the urban planners and people
(09:02):
who are concerned about the city, and I loved the
Highline just as a thing, as a remnant of its history.
So I joined this group called Friends of the high Line,
and through that suddenly realized there was this site that
nobody wanted because it was bifurcated by a train track
(09:22):
thirty feet above ground. CSX, which is now owned by
what now gave the tracks to the city, but at
that time, when Bloomberg was mayor, CSX still owned it.
But it's such a huge conglomerate that you couldn't talk
to anyone, and they didn't give a damn about what
they're trying things.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
They want to rip it down.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
The city didn't own it yet, they hadn't been gifted
it by CSX.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It wasn't a park, it wasn't This wasn't that.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
We had to build a hotel, so I had to
figure out how to build around it. So you end
up with these weird things. It's not in retrocirc It's
not like you have a vision. You just make the
best of what you have. Like if the mercer changed soho, Well,
the reason I was able to get something sobo was
that nobody else wanted to be there.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
If now you know one of the most expensive neighborhoods
on the West Side, largely you know, Barry and Dan
built that spectacular pier and all of that stuff. But
that came years afterwards, right the Whitney moved down there afterwards.
The whole neighborhood changed after the Standard as well. But
we built the Standard there because it was the one
(10:36):
place I could do it. Because it was inexpensive, nobody
wanted it, nobody knew what to do.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And you know what you did. Well.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
That's it's sort of a great business model plan when
you're but you also have to have the eye you
have and the I for detail.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Now, when you know, I've stayed in a number.
Speaker 7 (10:50):
Of your hotels over the years as a complete guest
and a lover of the hotels, sometimes not even realizing
they were your hotels, just because they were great, you know,
And I'd be like with Anty Cohen, he'd be like,
you know, Andreas is a ton I'm just.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Like, Oh.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
One of the things that you do, which I so
appreciate because I have such a big pet peeve, especially
in my beloved city of New York, is the design.
So when you talk about the standard, the design of
that hotel does not go against the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
What was authentic to that neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And so many buildings I see now going up in
New York City are just to me horrific.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
What made you design it that way?
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And it's very sexy and a lot of people do
have sex against those windows.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
It's such a funny story about that.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Again, it because it's the only hotel that I've been
able to for circumstances, I've been able to do it
was it's crafted literally from the inside out, the way
all proper buildings should be. And because it's purpose built,
it's not a developer who wants to build something and
then they're going to sell it off to someone else.
(12:00):
Look at the worlds, let's use the modernist vocabulary. Right
in New York City, buildings like the Seagrums building or
a lever House or Rockefeller Center stand out as well.
It was amazing, but they were all built for the owner.
Lebronfons built Seagrums right, lever House was built for it.
(12:24):
The standard was built specifically to use the architecture and
everything to what then was it was the third sort
of fourth standard we've done. It took one in Hollywood,
one downtown LA one in Miami, and then that was
the fourth one and by harnessing the architecture. But I
(12:46):
remember for so long the idea. Of course it was
a budget hotel. That was the idea. So the idea
was how do you make the rooms as small as
possible but feel as big. But one way to do
that is to have Florida ceiling glass. And the other
thing is if you have Florida ceiling glass is you
can't make it reflective or it's going to look like
(13:07):
every other blue or gray or green tinted office building exactly.
So you had so it's very expensive lead free glass
that is perfectly clear. And the idea was that you
walk into the room and you almost can't see, like
falling out.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
That was the idea. Then the other thing is we
I flipped the rooms on side.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
On some of the rooms, instead of a shoe box
like thing, it became horizontal. So instead of thirty five
thirty six feet from the door to the window, it
became sixteen feet, which made you open the door and
you're like, whoa, I've just fallen into the city of
New York.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I mean, And that's the kind of playfulness that one
can do if you're building something from scratch.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Welcome back to Table for two.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
The hotels of our guest, Andre Blas are beautiful and
one of.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
The kind spaces.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
One incredible example of this is the rooftop bar at
the Standard in New York City. What's Andrea's secret? How
does he bring experiences like this together where there is
like does the design in Andrea's head go all the
way up to say, okay, this is sort of like
the cherry on the top of this is going to be.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Well, every space has a narrative in my mind. I
always try to approach it with some story. But that
one was such a slam dunk in a way because
there are two places in New York that were, you know,
elegant cocktail lounges on top of the building, the rainbow
rooms and Windows in the World.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well Windows on.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
The World was no longer and Rainbow room is hardly
a cool place.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
So what do you do? You need a new.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Rainbow room for a different generation in different plays. And
the advantage which we also took advances here in downtown
LA with the standard, is that you don't want to
be the tallest building because then all you're looking at
is the air conditioning and the.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Top of any buildings.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
You don't want to be the lowest building, but you
want to be right in between so that when you're
looking out a window, as you can in the Boom
Boom Room, you can look up and you can look
down exactly. And the way the buildings bent because I
knew who could be a wood build to the north,
we bent the building to preserve the views onto the
(15:54):
Empire State Building. When one can do this, people really
to it, and then it becomes the physical platform for
that what then has to become a social platform.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
But it's a little bit like a play.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
I suppose you know, you need to create the set,
but a fantastic set doesn't mean that the plays create
at all.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Completely right, Well, I mean one of the things that
I think you also do very artfully.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
And you're right, it's like a play or it's like
a movie, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
You walk in and you feel like you're kind of
going into a different place in time.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Everything I tried to my best in my ability, with
the help of a lot of good people. I think
a good hotel should be like a living room for
everybody's It should by definition be democratic and open to everybody.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
If there's anything that.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Qualifying things that the more interesting you are, the more
you're well, nobody's not welcome, because if that were the case,
I don't think this kind of hotel would work. Well.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
I mean, it's interesting because whatever you changed and when,
and I'm sure there were many things that you changed
from my hotel that was opened in nineteen twenty seven
when you acquired.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It in nineteen ninety ninety, specific.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
The authenticity around it continues. So if you go into
like the rooms, like it's so like the rooms here
are so fascinating because this is where people live here.
You know, they choose to live here, they choose to
have secondary residences here.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I mean they have you know.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
You know a few of them right now, but we
don't mention names.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
So but no, that's right, and it's and you know,
it's so cool because when you go back into your spaces,
you mean, you're going.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Back in time.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
You know, there's things, there's telephones, there's there's couches, there's
soul where there's things that are like, oh.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I'm in a different decade, you know what I mean,
I'm in a different time.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
It's really groovy.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
If you don't know, and you're listening, Andrea has been,
you've been in this business now.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Of length thirty four years.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
What's the first thing that when you walk into a
hotel that you look at to should say? Because I
know what it is what I look at that you
look at and say, oh, okay.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
I don't look I feel the first thing I want
to feel. And I would never pretend to try to
do something that I'm not that isn't within my.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Sphere. Like if you asked me to.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Produce a television show, I can guarantee you it'll be
a flow. It's my taste is too particular. But if
I act on what I know, I know that there's
enough people that it'll be successful. We've never had a
feel because I've never tried to overreach, so meaning that
(19:08):
I believe that once you stay true to what you
know yourself, what you believe, what you believe, the experience
should be. To me, a place that I feel comfortable
is number one. Place that first makes me feel safe
in every term of the word. It's embracing. I know
(19:30):
that my privacy is not going to be violated. Whatever
I do.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Is not going to be somehow invaded on.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
And when I feel safe, then I become less inhibitive.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And if you.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Think about what one of the greatest joys one can
have in life is to feel uninhibitive. So what can
a good hotel provide One It makes you feel safe,
that triggers your lack of inhibitions, and that allows you
to then experience things that you wouldn't necessarily experience. The
(20:11):
old adage which kilt in their holiday and Institute. After
the Second World War, when the American hotel industry took over,
it was, you know, the world was a dangerous place.
That's the way people saw it, and things like home
away from Home, which was one hotel chains slowly, you know,
(20:31):
if you think about it, at least the people that
I'm interested in hanging out with, the last thing they
want to do is leave home, travel someplace else, and feel.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Like they're going at home exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
So the whole point is to get away from home
to be home.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
But to that feeling, strangely, you first have to feel
even safer than natrone or as safe as at home.
Then you let your guard down. Then you can experience
something else, and then you made do things that you
wouldn't even do it. A romance is great, business partnerships
(21:11):
and whatever.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
It may be.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, in one of your hotels, before I got into
the room, I had taken off all my crothes in
the hallway to be.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
With the person I was going to be with.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
So you clearly felt at home.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I felt right outside the doors. How does one sort
of manage this whole sort of idea that, okay, this
sort of empire to use lack of a better word,
and you're in a constant state of acquisitions, new builds,
(21:49):
new ideas, conversions, renovations like how does that in Andrea
Blasa's head?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
How do you when you wake up? How are you
navigating this?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
And also maintaining a sense of such serenity and peace
as what I'm feeling as I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Next to you, and every time I'm like you, I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I mean, what is the most challenging piece of in
the dynamic of what you do?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Look, navigating COVID was really difficult, definitely fueled by my
understanding of the severity, the medical the reality of pandemics
throughout history and.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
What this was about. I think I lost my bearing.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
A little bit in that I became overly concerned about
it and I completely underestimated societies, our societies, but most societies.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Willingness to completely ignore it. That's probably been the most.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Difficult thing I've had to navigate in this business, other
than trying to build a nursery in New.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
York physically literally literally all So, what is your joy?
What you do?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Is?
Speaker 3 (23:02):
It's so super hard. What is like the most joyful.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Aspect of the four It's very clear the most joyful
aspect is making people happy.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
I don't know, I don't know where that gene comes from.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
It's probably got something to do with why actors want
to act or comedians want to be comedians.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That you know, it just makes me happy to see
other people happy. It's it's just a psychic reward, you know.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
We we we did the did this party to celebrate
the tenth anniversary of the children.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
So that was a big deal and a party.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
So it was it was, it was, It was a
lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And what was interesting is.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
It it's always difficult to enter a city and figure
out not only take the most basic stuff like how
do you build something without people dying, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
How do you then.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Centric because having it be a success is the easy part.
Having it survived its success is the hard party really
is and that is a whole other game, you know,
because every you know, we live in a society, or
anything new is great. The question is how do you
survive being the next.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Great, staying in the conversation, staying relevant.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
And what was so satisfying in that in organizing that
event was how many people was just responded to it,
you know, and it was fascinating because some people say,
oh my god, it's already been ten years, and other
people said, it's only been ten years. So you realize
(24:54):
that the intensity of the interaction of the people with
that place, which is, you know, ten years versus this
is almost one hundred. Yeah, it was so refreshing to
me because that's what gives me joy, is to have
people connect to a place to say things like you say, yeah,
(25:18):
I think it's a wonderful lady to take your clothes
up all the way before you get into the.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Room, thanks for joining us for table for two. So
(25:46):
much goes into making a hotel feel like a safe,
welcoming place.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Everything from the design to casting the staff must be
just right to create a great destination.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I'm curious how does he find the right balance at
each one of his hotels.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
We don't we share.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Andy Cohen as a very close friend of ours, and
I was speaking to Andy today and I said, oh, yeah,
you know, I'm gonna So it.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Was Andrea and we're gonna have a drink and we're.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Gonna and he was like, oh, I need to write
Andre note and let him know. So you know, he
was just there last week and he was there for
the week, and he was promoting his show, and he
was and this was what always filled me up when
people would talk to me about the restaurant.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
I need to tell Andre how how.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Incredible the people are, how incredible the people are, that
how they treated me, how incredible.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
And that is how you stay.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
I think in the room, have the longevity because you
know people will come and go.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
It is a transient business. There's a burnout piece to it.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
But if you can maintain that culture, because it becomes
all about the culture, so you set the tone of culture.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
And I think what happens, which is challenging to a
lot of places, is they lose their culture.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
And when you lose the culture, it happens all the time,
and I find it fascinating.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
In the say call it luxury.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
I mean not that the chateau is from a physical
point of view, luxury, but from an experiential point of view,
it certainly this luxury. I think, how you The problem
I believe in this industry is how the industry is structured,
the ownership. Think of how many hotels or publicly traded corporations.
(27:31):
Think of how many are owned by these private equity firms.
Or other institutional money that needs certain returns and then
think of who trains these people.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I mean it's if you think of the awards system.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
You know you talk about a five star hotel, Well,
the full concept of five stars are started by Mobile
Oil Corporation. It's like the Michelang Guide, which is a
rubber tire company rating restaurants, and we take it seriously
coming from a tire company.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
They're rating hotels now.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
This year, which we did very well and it was great,
but it's still it's a tire company.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Let's licensed its name.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Forbes is a magazine and financial magazine that's defunct, but
they've licensed their name. And now you've got a company
going around rating Forbes hotels. You've got five Stars, which
has been invented by the gas company.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
All you have.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Before that, the Automobile Association of America TRIPLEA had a
rating system which goes back to when people would travel
and they want to encourage car travel, gasoline, rubber cars.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
You wanted to go to this.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Different city, you didn't know where to stay, so we
went ahead and raided the hotels.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Is the way to stay.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Today that's morphed into something that's made everything but homogeneous.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
It is. It's so painful.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Even i'm on Adrian Zecha, who was sort of a
mentor mind when I decided to go into the business.
I just sort of offered to be his assistant for
two years and traveled around them.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Back then, a'mon was unique.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Today it's like Four Seasons or Park Hyde or the
Peninsula or Mandarin Oriental. I mean, you go into the
lobby and you can't.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You don't know. They're all the same.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
They're all the same. You can't, you don't know exactly.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
So what does luxury mean today? Which is I think
is a really interesting question.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I do too, And I think you can even equate
that with the movie business, with a lot of these
studios being bought up by things like AT and T
or Comcast, you know, these big there's a you know,
you don't have, you know, the Jack Warners, you don't
have the Sharry Lansings, you.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Don't have the you know, Bob.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
You know, also, you lose there's a flavor that's gone
because they're not movie people.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
They don't know how to And so I think to
your point.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
It's very very similar.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
I mean, I I've also said this before I'm tried.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
But what we do is very much like producing a movie.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
The differences that it's more like a play because it
has to go on the next day and the same
person who is fantastic on Monday may be in a
bad mood on Tuesday. So it's not like you can
wrap it and it's done yet. On the other hand,
it still is like a movie production. You have to
invent it, create it, have a set, shoot it, but
(30:42):
then you have to do it again and again again.
How you do that is deeply dependent on who's behind.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It, deeply dependent on completely.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Look, Mike Nichols could do a play and there was
no way it was going to go off kilter. If
it went off kilter, it was because he took it
off kilter. Yeah, but it's not because someone interfered.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Right, It's true, And it's very you could really tell
and like it is like a play because it's like
we're gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna come in,
I'm gonna open the dru i'm gonna turn on the lights,
I'm gonna start, you know, get the theater, get the
the the.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Orchestra, rety. But then it's different every day because I
don't know who's gonna walk through and up to that podium.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I don't know what's gonna happen in that room that's
gonna call and say, oh okay. So the play changes
every day, and again I will bring it to when
you're paying attention, when the when the owner is there,
when it's not the corporation, then.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
You have the control.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Then you have the control, which is a good word
to sort of make sure the scene that you envision
is set. Every day might shift, but the players aren't
gonna understand all of a sudden. You don't have the
corporate entity bottom lining your expenses, bottom lining your people,
(32:05):
putting everyone in horrible uniforms, doing all the things that
they do, and they take away, like you said, the specialists.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
I think that that is one of the problem challenges
for the luxury business in general. Is not luxury Again,
I'm not talking about material or expense. I'm talking about
the richness of experience. When I talk about luxury, that's
what it is meaning. Am I giving something banal or
(32:36):
am I giving something interesting? It's not a function of money.
It's a function of richness of experience. And I don't
think that one can create a rich experience if the
underlying financial structure does not embrace that. So if you
(32:58):
have private equity firms that are looking for twelve and
a half percent return as a minimum before anyone gets
a bonus, so you really have to get twenty five percent,
and we're going to ruin what it is because this
business can't yield those kinds of returns. But since the
money goes wherever the money needs to go to finance it,
(33:20):
it's a very weird business. Then you get into the
flip side, which is the vanity people. But when I
can feel within a minute of walking into a place
what the ownership is, that's either ownership that's there for
the money or it's ownership that's there for the vanity,
and both of.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Them have their pitfalls.
Speaker 8 (33:40):
Yeah, tell me about your function by any Warhol, What
was that timeline?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
All right?
Speaker 4 (33:58):
So, look, Andy, who was a very very close friend,
had a habit of picking up certain people at times
who fascinated him for whatever fascinated him at the time.
I believe that I just happened to be a person
(34:20):
that he was interested in for the last seven years
of his.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Life, and.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
I sort of became together with Page Powell and would
sort of alternate date nights and sometimes Katie, my then
wife with the company, is but I sort of became.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
His date, and.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
So I was seeing three or four nights a week,
every week minimum, and we just do all kinds of things.
But I mean the range of things we go from.
I remember a dinner at the Odeon with Jean Michel
Bosca Jehn Michelle's father, who was a very upper ranking,
(35:11):
you know, accounting executive at a big eight accounting firm,
wearing bankers pinsiler suits. I happened to be when I
got the call from Andy, I happened to have already
told my lawyer, who was you know, blue blazer, khaki,
yellow tide things. So you can imagine Jean Michelle, me Andy,
(35:34):
his father, je Michelle's father, and my lawyer having dinner.
Then we go to the garage where Keith Harring is
having a party, but nobody recognized Andy or John Michell Basca.
So we were standing there and Andy had to ask
some door bouncer to go upstairs and get Keith to
(35:56):
come down and let us in. So it goes back
to that that weird time that was before Tony Shafrazi
put Jaman Schabaska and Andy together in that collaboration or
whatever you want to call it. So we were friends
on that level, and it just I don't know, I
spent an extraordinary amount of time with him.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I mean that is first of all, being in that room,
in that decade with those people.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Again with like, there's like no when you're in a
when you're in time in your life where you're not
just you're not aware of it and you're just in it,
and you happen to be in a historical moment of time.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, incredibly artistic people without our going to change the narrative.
It's kind of wild and it had to be a
huge influence in what you then didn't even know you
were about to go from here.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
I'm sure it did, right, right, I'm sure it does.
And I was just, you know, I I feel like
I've been an extraordinarily fortunate person.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
What's on the horizon.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
So you've accomplished so much in your career and you
still are sort of so vibrant, and is there something
that you haven't done or is there you know, something.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
That is brewing the chamber is brewing in the blas.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It's a question. I asked myself, Look, these we've never
managed other people's hotels. Who never you know, everything that
we do is.
Speaker 4 (37:39):
From the ground up, right, So there are significant commitments
in time, and the question is what do you What is.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Compelling to me?
Speaker 4 (37:53):
I think that the there are one or two things
that have to do with you know.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
One is sort of although we developed.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Them on paper but never built them fully, is a
you know, health spa wellness thing. The other is creating
a literally a community but for older people who are
(38:23):
not really old in any way except certain things start
to give way, sure, and there's nothing that's of a
quality for them. If I think about okay, look someone
like Famously again I'm not speaking of school, but Carl Lagelfeld,
who was always at the Mercer.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Like, where would he be living today? Where would he
want to live? I always like to live.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
At the Mercer. He had an apartment on Gramercy Park.
He wrote me a long letter saying, you know, I've
never even though I own a place a few blocks
away from me, I've never lived there.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
I think you're so onto it like that is, but
that you.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Know, it has to be all the right circumstances, right.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
But I think you know the idea that creating a
community for people who are aging and but aging in
the way I.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Mean, this is like the year of sixty. Like I mean,
everyone is crossing over into like a year of sixty.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Everyone looks fantastic, everyone's still vibrant in their life. But
you know we're now going to be in the sixty
to eighty zone of the next twenty years of our lives.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
So to create that experience where you go downs.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
I don't need that house, I don't need that stuff,
but I want the community, I want the services.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
I want that.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
That's what intrusion.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
I haven't really sorted it out, but but you know, owning,
you know, a house here, there, and all over the
place is becomes more and more exhausting, and you realize
that you're running all these and wouldn't it be great
when you go and you run into you are fairly
(40:07):
sure that you're going to run into a friend that
you would love to and it just happens that there's
nick it.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
You know, they're there for a month as.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Yours, yeah, or forget a month, but if it's they're
there for that's it.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
That's it that's where they live and they travel from there. Well,
Andy and I will both be buying.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
But this is certainly the place to start.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I mean you and I would think I would have
said my husband, but Brian Alway says, well, your real husband,
Andy Cohen, So like that will be where we're we're
going to be first. I want to thank you so much,
and I want to thank you on behalf of creating
what I think is the most valuable thing one can
create in life, which has experiences for people in community,
and like what has happened over the course of my
(40:53):
my adult years and as a result of the things
you've created have been magical and have bond to meet
a people for life.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
And I love you.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
You are an incredible man and it's an honor to
sit here with you at your first baby.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
The chateau. It really is. This is a big deal.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Thank you, Thank you, Thanks, It's been an utter pleasure.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Thank you for pulling up a chair.
Speaker 9 (41:27):
I love our lunches and never forget the romance of
a meal. If you enjoy the show, please tell a
friend and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Table
for Two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio seven three,
seven Part and Airmail. Our executive producers are Bruce Bosi
and Nathan King. Our supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Our editors are.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Vincent to Johnny and Cas b Bias.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
Table for two is researched and written by Jack Sullivan.
Our sound engineers Our Meal, b Kl, Jesse Krainich, Evan Taylor,
and Jesse Funk. Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our
talent booking is done by Jane Sarkin. Table for two
Social media manager is Gracie Wiener. Special thanks to Amy Sugarman,
Uni Scherer, Kevin Yvane, Bobby Bauer, Alison Kanter Graber. For
(42:19):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, thanks for pulling up a cheer on Table
for two. This is Bruce and we are in Hollywood. However,
we're not at the Tower. We're a block down from
the tower. Tonight, we're having dinner in someone's home. One
could say that.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I think the casion calls for vesper. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Oh I like this.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
A man who created one of the most beautiful, mysterious
hotels in Los Angeles called the Chateau. Oh my god,
look at this, cheers salt. It's not our date night,
we're just having just a warm This would be mister
(00:45):
Andrea Balaz. He's responsible for such hotels as the Mercer
in New York, Chiltern Firehouse in London, a multitude of experiences,
his attention to details unrivaled, his elegance unmatched. So sit back, enjoy,
because we're going.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
To go deep with Andre.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I'm Rus Bassi and this is my podcast Table for two. Okay,
this is so exciting to me. Everybody, if you've pulled
up a chair tonight, this is very really special, my friend,
because we are in Hollywood, at the most glamorous place
(01:28):
undeniably in Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
That you have created.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
It is not where we often find ourselves and we're
sitting with the empresario, the king, the master of experience
and hotels and so much more. So we're going to
talk about that, mister Andrea blaz Welcome. So this was
the chateau moment was your first property.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
But you it's strange in one year, you know, I
was in the biotech business before. I having sort of
a serial entrepreneurs I started started newspapers, not school papers,
but newspapers in college with some partners, and I started
other businesses. Then I started biotech business. I did that
for a while. I didn't like the way my life
(02:14):
was bifurcated between my personal life and work life. So
after the company public, you know, I thought, you know,
what would be an interesting thing where basically I couldn't
distinguish the difference between work and play.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
This being a perfect example of it.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Wow, right, we're here where friends, we've been friends for
a long time. We happen to be doing a podcast.
Is sort of a business of yours. We're talking sort
of about a business mind. But I couldn't tell you,
you know, if this if we were paying for this
meal and and someone said, did you just have a
business meeting or did you have a personal meeting. I
(02:57):
wouldn't be able to say what it was. Yeah, And
that was the goal, just blend everything. So that's how
I got into it. And in nineteen ninety just happened
to be a year that I bought the building that
then became the Mercer, and I was here staying as
we started a nightclub called BC down Road that we
(03:19):
never got licensed because it got so much advanced hype that.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
The city said no, Yeah, but I tried to salvage it.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Right. So I was here, I was staying of the Chateau,
and I realized there's something about this place. So I
ended up buying this building the same year as I
bought the building in nineteen ninety. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So I like how you started that by saying creating
the letting go of the bifurcation that we all are
basically trained to think that you have to live your
life up work, home, workplay or separate as opposed to
bringing them together.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
And it's been a mission in my life to sort
of obliterate that line. Yeah, so that everything is play
or everything is work, but the whole idea of work
is that it should be something you like doing so
much that's not considered work.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Right, and the irony of what you're talking about is undeniably.
This business, I think is one of the hardest businesses
to work at.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
What you would know, Yes, I spent years and difficult many.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And on a multitude of levels, so to be able
to sort of kind of understand how to bring those
two together.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
You know what you do, so the chateau. So if
we kind of just take that beat in your life.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So for those of you who are who have pulled
up a sure today, the mercy of New York which
and the chateau they you know, having that vision I
think is really fascinating that you saw the beauty of that,
You saw the beauty of the sort of the symmetry
of to central downtown Soho, New York, which was a
(05:02):
sexy it.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
And when I look when I recently came, I've been
looking through a building an upstate New York, a place
up there, and we've been collecting, just working on a
book sort of called the Ship We've Done.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
This working title, right, is a great title, The Ship
We've done.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
The Ship We've done it.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Now, this is a very collaborative business and there's always
a week, there's no eye. And I came across this,
this box that was sort of a mailer to introduce
the mercer, and I realized, you know, it's hard to
imagine today when every city in the world has a Soho,
but back then I had to it was it was
(05:47):
an old fashioned hotel bell and I had to go
to Nasau and get a satellite picture because I wanted.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
No one knew where Soho was, so the.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Idea was this mailer was that it would see to
pick the little button at the top of the the
bell popped through Soho because no one knew where Soba
was in Manhattan when I bought that building, which was
the Astor family's headquarters, which is why it had sort
of more elegance to it than all its neighbors.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
They were in a fur trapping business.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
A mercer is someone who cleans furs, hence the name
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And we.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
But the biggest concern was that no one knew where
it was, and if they didn't know where it was,
whether it was sleep there because it was. There were
two restaurants, Raoul's being one of these, stood there. Another
one was a place called Food That's not there. I remember,
and there was there was forget retail, there was nothing.
(06:49):
There was art galleries and literally I lived on the
top floor of this loft buildings or walk up because
the four floors blow me was occupied by a rag business.
They collected rags and sent them out to JFK to
clean airplane parts. I kid you not, that's what that's
(07:11):
the soho that the mercer was born into.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
It's it couldn't imagine what it is transformation.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
In essence, by acquiring that real estate, bringing your vision,
you changed the whole.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
The neighborhood, neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
How does that all work together? And why doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Scare you or why you know just say, wait a minute,
I'm going to do this, but like there's no one
down here.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Well, the good thing is I started everything young enough.
When you know things are being scared, don't don't occur
to you.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
You just kind of do it.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
So this a lot to be said for not need today.
You can call it ballsy later on, but that's retrospective
and there's no option right exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
And you buy a building.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
In a shitty neighborhood because that's what you can afford
to buy. So the fact that it then becomes the
most expensive neighborhood in Manhattan.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
Is not.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
It's a result of this, but it certainly it's like
the standard that we built over the high Line.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
The only reason I was.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Able to build that, and that's the unfortunately, the only
hotel that I had the good fortune.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
To be able to build from ground up.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Everything else has been a conversion of some other building,
like a warehouse, like the Mercer. But that building we're
able to do because nobody wanted the real estate. You know,
at that time, everybody was demanding that the high Line
be torn down. I just happened to know a bunch
of artists and you know, the urban planners and people
(09:02):
who are concerned about the city, and I loved the
Highline just as a thing, as a remnant of its history.
So I joined this group called Friends of the high Line,
and through that suddenly realized there was this site that
nobody wanted because it was bifurcated by a train track
(09:22):
thirty feet above ground. CSX, which is now owned by
what now gave the tracks to the city, but at
that time, when Bloomberg was mayor, CSX still owned it.
But it's such a huge conglomerate that you couldn't talk
to anyone, and they didn't give a damn about what
they're trying things.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
They want to rip it down.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
The city didn't own it yet, they hadn't been gifted
it by CSX.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It wasn't a park, it wasn't This wasn't that.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
We had to build a hotel, so I had to
figure out how to build around it. So you end
up with these weird things. It's not in retrocirc It's
not like you have a vision. You just make the
best of what you have. Like if the mercer changed soho, Well,
the reason I was able to get something sobo was
that nobody else wanted to be there.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
If now you know one of the most expensive neighborhoods
on the West Side, largely you know, Barry and Dan
built that spectacular pier and all of that stuff. But
that came years afterwards, right the Whitney moved down there afterwards.
The whole neighborhood changed after the Standard as well. But
we built the Standard there because it was the one
(10:36):
place I could do it. Because it was inexpensive, nobody
wanted it, nobody knew what to do.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And you know what you did. Well.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
That's it's sort of a great business model plan when
you're but you also have to have the eye you
have and the I for detail.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Now, when you know, I've stayed in a number.
Speaker 7 (10:50):
Of your hotels over the years as a complete guest
and a lover of the hotels, sometimes not even realizing
they were your hotels, just because they were great, you know,
And I'd be like with Anty Cohen, he'd be like,
you know, Andreas is a ton I'm just.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Like, Oh.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
One of the things that you do, which I so
appreciate because I have such a big pet peeve, especially
in my beloved city of New York, is the design.
So when you talk about the standard, the design of
that hotel does not go against the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
What was authentic to that neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And so many buildings I see now going up in
New York City are just to me horrific.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
What made you design it that way?
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And it's very sexy and a lot of people do
have sex against those windows.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
It's such a funny story about that.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Again, it because it's the only hotel that I've been
able to for circumstances, I've been able to do it
was it's crafted literally from the inside out, the way
all proper buildings should be. And because it's purpose built,
it's not a developer who wants to build something and
then they're going to sell it off to someone else.
(12:00):
Look at the worlds, let's use the modernist vocabulary. Right
in New York City, buildings like the Seagrums building or
a lever House or Rockefeller Center stand out as well.
It was amazing, but they were all built for the owner.
Lebronfons built Seagrums right, lever House was built for it.
(12:24):
The standard was built specifically to use the architecture and
everything to what then was it was the third sort
of fourth standard we've done. It took one in Hollywood,
one downtown LA one in Miami, and then that was
the fourth one and by harnessing the architecture. But I
(12:46):
remember for so long the idea. Of course it was
a budget hotel. That was the idea. So the idea
was how do you make the rooms as small as
possible but feel as big. But one way to do
that is to have Florida ceiling glass. And the other
thing is if you have Florida ceiling glass is you
can't make it reflective or it's going to look like
(13:07):
every other blue or gray or green tinted office building exactly.
So you had so it's very expensive lead free glass
that is perfectly clear. And the idea was that you
walk into the room and you almost can't see, like
falling out.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
That was the idea. Then the other thing is we
I flipped the rooms on side.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
On some of the rooms, instead of a shoe box
like thing, it became horizontal. So instead of thirty five
thirty six feet from the door to the window, it
became sixteen feet, which made you open the door and
you're like, whoa, I've just fallen into the city of
New York.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I mean, And that's the kind of playfulness that one
can do if you're building something from scratch.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Welcome back to Table for two.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
The hotels of our guest, Andre Blas are beautiful and
one of.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
The kind spaces.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
One incredible example of this is the rooftop bar at
the Standard in New York City. What's Andrea's secret? How
does he bring experiences like this together where there is
like does the design in Andrea's head go all the
way up to say, okay, this is sort of like
the cherry on the top of this is going to be.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Well, every space has a narrative in my mind. I
always try to approach it with some story. But that
one was such a slam dunk in a way because
there are two places in New York that were, you know,
elegant cocktail lounges on top of the building, the rainbow
rooms and Windows in the World.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well Windows on.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
The World was no longer and Rainbow room is hardly
a cool place.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
So what do you do? You need a new.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Rainbow room for a different generation in different plays. And
the advantage which we also took advances here in downtown
LA with the standard, is that you don't want to
be the tallest building because then all you're looking at
is the air conditioning and the.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Top of any buildings.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
You don't want to be the lowest building, but you
want to be right in between so that when you're
looking out a window, as you can in the Boom
Boom Room, you can look up and you can look
down exactly. And the way the buildings bent because I
knew who could be a wood build to the north,
we bent the building to preserve the views onto the
(15:54):
Empire State Building. When one can do this, people really
to it, and then it becomes the physical platform for
that what then has to become a social platform.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
But it's a little bit like a play.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
I suppose you know, you need to create the set,
but a fantastic set doesn't mean that the plays create
at all.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Completely right, Well, I mean one of the things that
I think you also do very artfully.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
And you're right, it's like a play or it's like
a movie, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
You walk in and you feel like you're kind of
going into a different place in time.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Everything I tried to my best in my ability, with
the help of a lot of good people. I think
a good hotel should be like a living room for
everybody's It should by definition be democratic and open to everybody.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
If there's anything that.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Qualifying things that the more interesting you are, the more
you're well, nobody's not welcome, because if that were the case,
I don't think this kind of hotel would work. Well.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
I mean, it's interesting because whatever you changed and when,
and I'm sure there were many things that you changed
from my hotel that was opened in nineteen twenty seven
when you acquired.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It in nineteen ninety ninety, specific.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
The authenticity around it continues. So if you go into
like the rooms, like it's so like the rooms here
are so fascinating because this is where people live here.
You know, they choose to live here, they choose to
have secondary residences here.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I mean they have you know.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
You know a few of them right now, but we
don't mention names.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
So but no, that's right, and it's and you know,
it's so cool because when you go back into your spaces,
you mean, you're going.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Back in time.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
You know, there's things, there's telephones, there's there's couches, there's
soul where there's things that are like, oh.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I'm in a different decade, you know what I mean,
I'm in a different time.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
It's really groovy.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
If you don't know, and you're listening, Andrea has been,
you've been in this business now.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Of length thirty four years.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
What's the first thing that when you walk into a
hotel that you look at to should say? Because I
know what it is what I look at that you
look at and say, oh, okay.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
I don't look I feel the first thing I want
to feel. And I would never pretend to try to
do something that I'm not that isn't within my.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Sphere. Like if you asked me to.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Produce a television show, I can guarantee you it'll be
a flow. It's my taste is too particular. But if
I act on what I know, I know that there's
enough people that it'll be successful. We've never had a
feel because I've never tried to overreach, so meaning that
(19:08):
I believe that once you stay true to what you
know yourself, what you believe, what you believe, the experience
should be. To me, a place that I feel comfortable
is number one. Place that first makes me feel safe
in every term of the word. It's embracing. I know
(19:30):
that my privacy is not going to be violated. Whatever
I do.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Is not going to be somehow invaded on.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
And when I feel safe, then I become less inhibitive.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And if you.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Think about what one of the greatest joys one can
have in life is to feel uninhibitive. So what can
a good hotel provide One It makes you feel safe,
that triggers your lack of inhibitions, and that allows you
to then experience things that you wouldn't necessarily experience. The
(20:11):
old adage which kilt in their holiday and Institute. After
the Second World War, when the American hotel industry took over,
it was, you know, the world was a dangerous place.
That's the way people saw it, and things like home
away from Home, which was one hotel chains slowly, you know,
(20:31):
if you think about it, at least the people that
I'm interested in hanging out with, the last thing they
want to do is leave home, travel someplace else, and feel.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Like they're going at home exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
So the whole point is to get away from home
to be home.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
But to that feeling, strangely, you first have to feel
even safer than natrone or as safe as at home.
Then you let your guard down. Then you can experience
something else, and then you made do things that you
wouldn't even do it. A romance is great, business partnerships
(21:11):
and whatever.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
It may be.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, in one of your hotels, before I got into
the room, I had taken off all my crothes in
the hallway to be.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
With the person I was going to be with.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
So you clearly felt at home.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I felt right outside the doors. How does one sort
of manage this whole sort of idea that, okay, this
sort of empire to use lack of a better word,
and you're in a constant state of acquisitions, new builds,
(21:49):
new ideas, conversions, renovations like how does that in Andrea
Blasa's head?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
How do you when you wake up? How are you
navigating this?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
And also maintaining a sense of such serenity and peace
as what I'm feeling as I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Next to you, and every time I'm like you, I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I mean, what is the most challenging piece of in
the dynamic of what you do?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Look, navigating COVID was really difficult, definitely fueled by my
understanding of the severity, the medical the reality of pandemics
throughout history and.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
What this was about. I think I lost my bearing.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
A little bit in that I became overly concerned about
it and I completely underestimated societies, our societies, but most societies.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Willingness to completely ignore it. That's probably been the most.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Difficult thing I've had to navigate in this business, other
than trying to build a nursery in New.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
York physically literally literally all So, what is your joy?
What you do?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Is?
Speaker 3 (23:02):
It's so super hard. What is like the most joyful.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Aspect of the four It's very clear the most joyful
aspect is making people happy.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
I don't know, I don't know where that gene comes from.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
It's probably got something to do with why actors want
to act or comedians want to be comedians.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That you know, it just makes me happy to see
other people happy. It's it's just a psychic reward, you know.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
We we we did the did this party to celebrate
the tenth anniversary of the children.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
So that was a big deal and a party.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
So it was it was, it was, It was a
lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And what was interesting is.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
It it's always difficult to enter a city and figure
out not only take the most basic stuff like how
do you build something without people dying, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
How do you then.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Centric because having it be a success is the easy part.
Having it survived its success is the hard party really
is and that is a whole other game, you know,
because every you know, we live in a society, or
anything new is great. The question is how do you
survive being the next.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Great, staying in the conversation, staying relevant.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
And what was so satisfying in that in organizing that
event was how many people was just responded to it,
you know, and it was fascinating because some people say,
oh my god, it's already been ten years, and other
people said, it's only been ten years. So you realize
(24:54):
that the intensity of the interaction of the people with
that place, which is, you know, ten years versus this
is almost one hundred. Yeah, it was so refreshing to
me because that's what gives me joy, is to have
people connect to a place to say things like you say, yeah,
(25:18):
I think it's a wonderful lady to take your clothes
up all the way before you get into the.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Room, thanks for joining us for table for two. So
(25:46):
much goes into making a hotel feel like a safe,
welcoming place.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Everything from the design to casting the staff must be
just right to create a great destination.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I'm curious how does he find the right balance at
each one of his hotels.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
We don't we share.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Andy Cohen as a very close friend of ours, and
I was speaking to Andy today and I said, oh, yeah,
you know, I'm gonna So it.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Was Andrea and we're gonna have a drink and we're.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Gonna and he was like, oh, I need to write
Andre note and let him know. So you know, he
was just there last week and he was there for
the week, and he was promoting his show, and he
was and this was what always filled me up when
people would talk to me about the restaurant.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
I need to tell Andre how how.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Incredible the people are, how incredible the people are, that
how they treated me, how incredible.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
And that is how you stay.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
I think in the room, have the longevity because you
know people will come and go.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
It is a transient business. There's a burnout piece to it.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
But if you can maintain that culture, because it becomes
all about the culture, so you set the tone of culture.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
And I think what happens, which is challenging to a
lot of places, is they lose their culture.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
And when you lose the culture, it happens all the time,
and I find it fascinating.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
In the say call it luxury.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
I mean not that the chateau is from a physical
point of view, luxury, but from an experiential point of view,
it certainly this luxury. I think, how you The problem
I believe in this industry is how the industry is structured,
the ownership. Think of how many hotels or publicly traded corporations.
(27:31):
Think of how many are owned by these private equity firms.
Or other institutional money that needs certain returns and then
think of who trains these people.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I mean it's if you think of the awards system.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
You know you talk about a five star hotel, Well,
the full concept of five stars are started by Mobile
Oil Corporation. It's like the Michelang Guide, which is a
rubber tire company rating restaurants, and we take it seriously
coming from a tire company.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
They're rating hotels now.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
This year, which we did very well and it was great,
but it's still it's a tire company.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Let's licensed its name.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Forbes is a magazine and financial magazine that's defunct, but
they've licensed their name. And now you've got a company
going around rating Forbes hotels. You've got five Stars, which
has been invented by the gas company.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
All you have.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Before that, the Automobile Association of America TRIPLEA had a
rating system which goes back to when people would travel
and they want to encourage car travel, gasoline, rubber cars.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
You wanted to go to this.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Different city, you didn't know where to stay, so we
went ahead and raided the hotels.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Is the way to stay.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Today that's morphed into something that's made everything but homogeneous.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
It is. It's so painful.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Even i'm on Adrian Zecha, who was sort of a
mentor mind when I decided to go into the business.
I just sort of offered to be his assistant for
two years and traveled around them.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Back then, a'mon was unique.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Today it's like Four Seasons or Park Hyde or the
Peninsula or Mandarin Oriental. I mean, you go into the
lobby and you can't.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You don't know. They're all the same.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
They're all the same. You can't, you don't know exactly.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
So what does luxury mean today? Which is I think
is a really interesting question.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I do too, And I think you can even equate
that with the movie business, with a lot of these
studios being bought up by things like AT and T
or Comcast, you know, these big there's a you know,
you don't have, you know, the Jack Warners, you don't
have the Sharry Lansings, you.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Don't have the you know, Bob.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
You know, also, you lose there's a flavor that's gone
because they're not movie people.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
They don't know how to And so I think to
your point.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
It's very very similar.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
I mean, I I've also said this before I'm tried.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
But what we do is very much like producing a movie.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
The differences that it's more like a play because it
has to go on the next day and the same
person who is fantastic on Monday may be in a
bad mood on Tuesday. So it's not like you can
wrap it and it's done yet. On the other hand,
it still is like a movie production. You have to
invent it, create it, have a set, shoot it, but
(30:42):
then you have to do it again and again again.
How you do that is deeply dependent on who's behind.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It, deeply dependent on completely.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Look, Mike Nichols could do a play and there was
no way it was going to go off kilter. If
it went off kilter, it was because he took it
off kilter. Yeah, but it's not because someone interfered.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Right, It's true, And it's very you could really tell
and like it is like a play because it's like
we're gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna come in,
I'm gonna open the dru i'm gonna turn on the lights,
I'm gonna start, you know, get the theater, get the
the the.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Orchestra, rety. But then it's different every day because I
don't know who's gonna walk through and up to that podium.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I don't know what's gonna happen in that room that's
gonna call and say, oh okay. So the play changes
every day, and again I will bring it to when
you're paying attention, when the when the owner is there,
when it's not the corporation, then.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
You have the control.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Then you have the control, which is a good word
to sort of make sure the scene that you envision
is set. Every day might shift, but the players aren't
gonna understand all of a sudden. You don't have the
corporate entity bottom lining your expenses, bottom lining your people,
(32:05):
putting everyone in horrible uniforms, doing all the things that
they do, and they take away, like you said, the specialists.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
I think that that is one of the problem challenges
for the luxury business in general. Is not luxury Again,
I'm not talking about material or expense. I'm talking about
the richness of experience. When I talk about luxury, that's
what it is meaning. Am I giving something banal or
(32:36):
am I giving something interesting? It's not a function of money.
It's a function of richness of experience. And I don't
think that one can create a rich experience if the
underlying financial structure does not embrace that. So if you
(32:58):
have private equity firms that are looking for twelve and
a half percent return as a minimum before anyone gets
a bonus, so you really have to get twenty five percent,
and we're going to ruin what it is because this
business can't yield those kinds of returns. But since the
money goes wherever the money needs to go to finance it,
(33:20):
it's a very weird business. Then you get into the
flip side, which is the vanity people. But when I
can feel within a minute of walking into a place
what the ownership is, that's either ownership that's there for
the money or it's ownership that's there for the vanity,
and both of.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Them have their pitfalls.
Speaker 8 (33:40):
Yeah, tell me about your function by any Warhol, What
was that timeline?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
All right?
Speaker 4 (33:58):
So, look, Andy, who was a very very close friend,
had a habit of picking up certain people at times
who fascinated him for whatever fascinated him at the time.
I believe that I just happened to be a person
(34:20):
that he was interested in for the last seven years
of his.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Life, and.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
I sort of became together with Page Powell and would
sort of alternate date nights and sometimes Katie, my then
wife with the company, is but I sort of became.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
His date, and.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
So I was seeing three or four nights a week,
every week minimum, and we just do all kinds of things.
But I mean the range of things we go from.
I remember a dinner at the Odeon with Jean Michel
Bosca Jehn Michelle's father, who was a very upper ranking,
(35:11):
you know, accounting executive at a big eight accounting firm,
wearing bankers pinsiler suits. I happened to be when I
got the call from Andy, I happened to have already
told my lawyer, who was you know, blue blazer, khaki,
yellow tide things. So you can imagine Jean Michelle, me Andy,
(35:34):
his father, je Michelle's father, and my lawyer having dinner.
Then we go to the garage where Keith Harring is
having a party, but nobody recognized Andy or John Michell Basca.
So we were standing there and Andy had to ask
some door bouncer to go upstairs and get Keith to
(35:56):
come down and let us in. So it goes back
to that that weird time that was before Tony Shafrazi
put Jaman Schabaska and Andy together in that collaboration or
whatever you want to call it. So we were friends
on that level, and it just I don't know, I
spent an extraordinary amount of time with him.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I mean that is first of all, being in that room,
in that decade with those people.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Again with like, there's like no when you're in a
when you're in time in your life where you're not
just you're not aware of it and you're just in it,
and you happen to be in a historical moment of time.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, incredibly artistic people without our going to change the narrative.
It's kind of wild and it had to be a
huge influence in what you then didn't even know you
were about to go from here.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
I'm sure it did, right, right, I'm sure it does.
And I was just, you know, I I feel like
I've been an extraordinarily fortunate person.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
What's on the horizon.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
So you've accomplished so much in your career and you
still are sort of so vibrant, and is there something
that you haven't done or is there you know, something.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
That is brewing the chamber is brewing in the blas.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It's a question. I asked myself, Look, these we've never
managed other people's hotels. Who never you know, everything that
we do is.
Speaker 4 (37:39):
From the ground up, right, So there are significant commitments
in time, and the question is what do you What is.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Compelling to me?
Speaker 4 (37:53):
I think that the there are one or two things
that have to do with you know.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
One is sort of although we developed.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Them on paper but never built them fully, is a
you know, health spa wellness thing. The other is creating
a literally a community but for older people who are
(38:23):
not really old in any way except certain things start
to give way, sure, and there's nothing that's of a
quality for them. If I think about okay, look someone
like Famously again I'm not speaking of school, but Carl Lagelfeld,
who was always at the Mercer.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Like, where would he be living today? Where would he
want to live? I always like to live.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
At the Mercer. He had an apartment on Gramercy Park.
He wrote me a long letter saying, you know, I've
never even though I own a place a few blocks
away from me, I've never lived there.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
I think you're so onto it like that is, but
that you.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Know, it has to be all the right circumstances, right.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
But I think you know the idea that creating a
community for people who are aging and but aging in
the way I.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Mean, this is like the year of sixty. Like I mean,
everyone is crossing over into like a year of sixty.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Everyone looks fantastic, everyone's still vibrant in their life. But
you know we're now going to be in the sixty
to eighty zone of the next twenty years of our lives.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
So to create that experience where you go downs.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
I don't need that house, I don't need that stuff,
but I want the community, I want the services.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
I want that.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
That's what intrusion.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
I haven't really sorted it out, but but you know, owning,
you know, a house here, there, and all over the
place is becomes more and more exhausting, and you realize
that you're running all these and wouldn't it be great
when you go and you run into you are fairly
(40:07):
sure that you're going to run into a friend that
you would love to and it just happens that there's
nick it.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
You know, they're there for a month as.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Yours, yeah, or forget a month, but if it's they're
there for that's it.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
That's it that's where they live and they travel from there. Well,
Andy and I will both be buying.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
But this is certainly the place to start.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I mean you and I would think I would have
said my husband, but Brian Alway says, well, your real husband,
Andy Cohen, So like that will be where we're we're
going to be first. I want to thank you so much,
and I want to thank you on behalf of creating
what I think is the most valuable thing one can
create in life, which has experiences for people in community,
and like what has happened over the course of my
(40:53):
my adult years and as a result of the things
you've created have been magical and have bond to meet
a people for life.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
And I love you.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
You are an incredible man and it's an honor to
sit here with you at your first baby.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
The chateau. It really is. This is a big deal.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Thank you, Thank you, Thanks, It's been an utter pleasure.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Thank you for pulling up a chair.
Speaker 9 (41:27):
I love our lunches and never forget the romance of
a meal. If you enjoy the show, please tell a
friend and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Table
for Two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio seven three,
seven Part and Airmail. Our executive producers are Bruce Bosi
and Nathan King. Our supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Our editors are.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Vincent to Johnny and Cas b Bias.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
Table for two is researched and written by Jack Sullivan.
Our sound engineers Our Meal, b Kl, Jesse Krainich, Evan Taylor,
and Jesse Funk. Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our
talent booking is done by Jane Sarkin. Table for two
Social media manager is Gracie Wiener. Special thanks to Amy Sugarman,
Uni Scherer, Kevin Yvane, Bobby Bauer, Alison Kanter Graber. For
(42:19):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Bruce Bozzi
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