Articles on The Chelsea in Atlantic City are consistently the top hits on my blog – its kinda amazing actually how after some posts have been up for almost a year – it still is a popular post.

Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to mention how The Chelsea is open and allowing guests to stay overnight (in fact, it has been since July 3rd) but the hotel will not be completely opened until August 1st.

Last Friday was the ribbon cutting, and also an opportunity for the public to get a tour of the hotel – pretty unique actually. I’m not too familiar with other hotel’s allowing the general public to come in for tours – or at least partially intending the tour patrons to be just general public people. It’s great that they are doing that since it really shows that Curtis Bashaw and his Cape Advisors group cares about the general public and isnt trying to make the hotel into something that’s too big for its britches.

I also have to congratulate the hotel on pretty much getting the opening done on time. As long as they make the August 1st opening date for the complete facility – they’ve hit their target. Last year initially the hotel was supposed to open by Memorial Day, but with some construction delays due to the condition of the former Howard Johnsons the opening was pushed back. Then, they decided to have a soft opening, where some rooms were put on line while others were still being constructed, and then finally – the full hotel opening on August 1st – that to me is how you do a hotel opening.

It’s kinda amazing to watch Cape Advisors do their opening vs how the Thompson Hotels does their openings – Thompson is famous for constantly delaying their openings, even to the extent that some employees think its opening one day, others think its opening another – and then the website saying something completely different! Not only that, but Thompson has a tendency to take a LOOONNNGG time to develop their hotels – the Thompson LES I believe took almost three years to build – and its still not even open yet. (July 29th is their 3rd attempt at an opening date this month alone) Now this isn’t some huge major hotel – its like 20 stories high.. Ridiculous.

Anyway, I’ll be at The Chelsea for their real opening day – August 1st, and I’ll have a report back here as to my thoughts of the facility.. From what i saw a few months ago with the hard hat tour – it should be everything that it’s been said to be – and more.

Now – the question comes to mind.. What’s next for Curtis Bashaw and his company? The Mondrian SoHo is one, Second? A new casino project to the south of the Hilton Atlantic City, and lastly – I think its a very good possibility that they are one of the parties interested in purchasing the Tropicana.

We’ll see!

andrew@alconic-inc.com