Real estate developer and hotelier Ian Reisner has signed a lease to take over the former Playboy Club space and the Cachet Boutique Hotel NYC on West 42nd Street — and the plan is to transform it into a gay-friendly hotel, restaurant and nightclub, Side Dish has learned.
The 105-room hotel, at 510 W. 42nd St. between 10th and 11th Avenues, shuttered last October after operating for six years.
The Playboy Club flamed out in 2019 after being open for barely a year.
Reisner says he is in talks with the Axel Hotel brand, which bills itself as the largest LGBTQI+ hotel chain in the world to run the hotel now, although he cautioned that 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 includes a 7,500-square-foot restaurant and common area that would be open for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night dining, Reisner said.
There’s also a 14,000-square-foot nightclub that would include an “experiential supper club” and a subterranean lounge space.
The hotel will open shortly.
The rest of the property, including a smaller, 3,000-square-foot restaurant, which will become the “experiential supper club,” is waiting to obtain a liquor license this summer or fall before opening, sources said.
A source added that Reisner is also “in talks” to bring in a well-known brand for the restaurant space — Employees Only restaurant and mixology bar is a possibility — as well as a 750-square-foot subterranean speakeasy bar for around 100 people with “banquettes, high-top tables, a bar and thick marble.”
It’s a return for Reisner, who previously co-founded the gay-friendly Out NYC hotel in the same space in 2012, when it was dubbed the city’s “new all-singing, all-dancing gay hotel.”
Ahead of its time, the hotel — and Reisner — were ultimately boycotted by the gay community in 2015, after Reisner hosted then-presidential Republican candidate Ted Cruz, who opposed gay marriage, for a dinner at his home.
“We were chased out of the business,” Reisner said.
Sources told Side Dish Reisner also received death threats at the time.
Cachet Boutique New York Hotel and the Playboy Club, which came next, also did not fare well — even following a $3 million renovation.
“Basically they mistimed it by two decades,” Reisner said. “The Playboy Club name was offensive. They opened in 2018, during the #MeToo movement. You can’t put women in a second-class position.”
Reisner adds: “The hotel failed for a different reason — they chose a terrible name. The Cachet Boutique Hotel. If you have cachet or panache, you don’t say you have it, you just do.”
When Reisner previously owned the Out hotel, the restaurant was known as KTCHN, and it was open from 2012 to 2017.
During that era, the nightclub operated as XL but in 2017 it swapped owners and was converted to the Playboy club, which morphed into Nightclub 42 d’Or before closing in December 2022.
Twelve years later, the neighborhood has transformed dramatically — from a barren wasteland to a bustling part of the city benefitting from new developments and an entire new Hudson Yards project filled with people who live, work, dine and shop there.
“The area is far more vibrant now,” said Ariel Palitz, a global government and hospitality consultant, and the founding former head of the New York City mayor’s office of nightlife.
“In theory [launching a gay-friendly hotel in the ‘hood is] a good and important idea and would be nothing but positive if done right and done well. In a city filled with hotels, there is room for one more dedicated to a gay clientele and culture that would create a safe and fun place for them — especially at a time when we are seeing some backtracking on gay rights, and all rights,” Palitz said.
Reisner agreed. “It’s way better now,” Reisner said. “Developers continue to build there. Before we were struggling. There was nothing. Now it’s all Hudson Yards — vibrant area and neighborhood.”