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Rot at Hollywood's "Playground": Chateau Marmont Staff Allege Racial Discrimination, Sexual Misconduct and Neglectful Management
by Gary Baum September 16, 2020, 6:45am PD
After a battle over unionization and mass layoffs, former employees reveal how the debauchery at the iconic hotel goes hand in hand with toxic management: "The leadership operates in a perpetual state of racism and unconscious bias."
Celebrity hotelier André Balazs announced a pandemic pivot July 28. He intended to turn his flagship lodging, the industry favorite Chateau Marmont, into an as-yet-unpriced private timeshare — though promising to keep its perennially trendy restaurant open to non-equity members. While the news was bemoaned across Hollywood as the loss of a storied hotel, for many of its staffers, 248 of whom were laid off at the onset of the coronavirus outbreak in mid-March, the move suggested something more nefarious: a ploy to bust their attempts at a union.
An organizing drive had quietly begun in the months before the plague hit, and by their reckoning Balazs appeared to see the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to counter it…
Regardless, Balazs’ moves have turned his former staffers talkative. Employees allege that the Chateau has been a workplace rife with toxic behavior, including neglectful management and unaddressed racial discrimination and sexual misconduct. They contend that the hotel’s tagline aimed at its privileged guests — "Always a safe haven" — doesn’t extend to those who tend to those guests…
…Balazs, 63, is one of the most celebrated hoteliers in the world. His name, rivaled in the U.S. only by fellow impresario Ian Schrager, has become shorthand for an auteurist vision of hospitality. Ivanka Trump once interned for him. A decade ago, hisBoom Boom Room at The Standard High Linewas the closest thing Manhattan had that harkened to the city’s Studio 54 era. A personal aphorism — "All good hotels tend to lead people to do things they wouldn’t necessarily do at home" — is quoted across the internet. He’s fond of comparing his output to that of a golden age director or producer. As he puts it, "What we try to create are experiences."…
…Balazs’ subsequent boutique endeavors, the Mercer in New York and the Chiltern Firehouse in London, are similarly star-studded. Over the years, he’s expanded into design-forward condos and launchedThe Standard, the hotel chain aimed at young professionals, its marketing relying heavily on suggestive stunts like models in sleepwear lying in repose within a glass vitrine behind the reception desk at the Sunset Boulevard outpost, just yards from the Chateau…
…The hotelier also has a history of sexual misconduct. In November 2017, multiple women, including a Chateau worker employed as a front desk clerk in the early 1990s (and identified only by her first name), accused Balazs in The New York Times of a pattern of groping. In one incident, actress Amanda Anka claimed he grabbed her crotch at his Chiltern Firehouse property after the London premiere of Horrible Bosses 2, in which her husband, Jason Bateman, starred. By the article’s account, multiple individuals witnessed the incident, and Bateman confronted Balazs afterward, spitting gum in his face.
The couple confirmed the "outrageous and vile behavior" to the Times in a statement. Balazs neither denied nor otherwise commented for the Times’ coverage, and his employees at the Chateau say he never addressed the allegations internally.
Earlier that year, in March, Balazs left the Standard hotel group, where he served as chairman and which he’d founded in 1998. While he announced at the time that the move was simply a "friendly parting of ways" as he focused his attention on the ultra-luxury hospitality market, THR has learned that he’d been maneuvered out, in part because of a history of inappropriate sexual interactions with subordinates — including a floor manager at the rooftop club of The Standard High Line, then known as the Boom Boom Room (now The Top of the Standard) — which resulted in confidential settlements.
The Chateau’s attorney denied that Balazs was involved in any such settlement during his time atThe Standard, insisting that his departure "came as a result of the sale of that business." A spokesperson for The Standard tells THR: "There were a multitude of business and personal factors that contributed to the company’s termination of André’s employment, removal from the board and repurchase of his interests. We have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment. Much of what has come to light publicly since his separation [from The Standard] was kept from senior management."
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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/rot-at-hollywoods-playground-chateau-marmont-staff-allege-racial-discrimination-sexual-misconduct-and-neglectful-management