Foreclosure: Home & Guesthouse Close

Exactly five years to the day after opening, Jon B's 27th Street mainstays Home and Guesthouse have closed. The presence of mounted police, klieg lights, and general harassment by authorities of all patrons wanting to party in Outer Chelsea (OuCh) proved too much. Almost 100 employees found out yesterday afternoon that they were no longer working at the venues. I caught up with Jon and asked him why he closed so suddenly. "I feel terrible. I took care of everybody as long as I could, even when times were tough for me. Yesterday I had to pay a bunch of fines, and I didn't have money in the account. I had to close -- there was no other option."

He took me back to 2005. “Between Home and Guesthouse, Spirit, Bed, Cain, Bungalow, Pink Elephant, and whatever they called that space where Suzie Wong’s is, we had over 10,000 people on a weekend night visiting the block. Now it’s down to about 2,500 ... that’s not enough to sustain a business. We were open seven nights a week for almost five years. I wish it could have lasted longer.” I asked what happens to the license and the lease. “I guess it goes back to the landlord.” Jon’s original landlord was Robbie Wooten, who opened the megaclub Spirit in his newly acquired 530 West 27th Street building. Spirit was a disaster. It wasn’t embraced at all by New York clubgoers, even though the formula was a smash back in Robbie’s Ireland. Massage tables and candles and all sorts of positive vibes and good karma didn’t excite anyone. The restaurant and healing center soon gave way to Jon Bakhshi, a self-proclaimed B+ promoter, who came in and almost saved the day(night) at the doomed club. Spirit would re-open but was such a bane to the area that transfer of the entire space to Jon B was denied. The local community board thought reducing the number of people coming to their precious OuCh district was necessary. The reality was that Spirit had gone “urban,” and neither the community nor the local police precinct was going to allow that.

A few years before, when Amy Sacco boldly built Bungalow 8 where no man or woman had built before, the block was the home of D+ hookers, pimps, and johns in cruising cars. The city granted fast-tracked cabaret and liquor licenses to owners and basically shut down access to these licenses everyplace else. The clubs in turn brought the fast lane of C-list celebrities, models, and bottle buyers to a block which had been a pimp and ho track. There was an excitement, a vibrancy—new construction everywhere. Licenses were given to anyone with a pulse. The city had solved its clubs-in-residential-neighborhoods problem by creating OuCh club ghettos in the Meatpacking District. These derelict neighborhoods would be gentrified by the multi-million-dollar investments in nightlife. They were basically killing two birds with one stone. The clubs wouldn’t be waking up the old ladies in the neighborhoods because new club investment would be drawn to the easy licensing and one-stop shopping of the disco-light districts being created. This would turn what was essentially red light districts into areas for art galleries, restaurants, and nightlife.

A couple years ago, the area was rezoned so that developers could build condos. The clubs were now a nuisance, and a tide of police and civil authorities used the unfortunate but vaguely connected death of Jennifer Moore as an excuse to get this real estate back into the hands of the developers, who saw the clubs as a non-selling point. Robbie Wooten sold his 530 property, once the home of Bed, Spirit, Home, and Guesthouse, to a group led by man about town Harlan Berger. There were stories about a film center, a hotel, and even a real nice club where Jon B’s “B crowd” would not be welcome. These A-list plans had Mark Baker and other A-list operator types swirling all around. The last few years have seen allegations and litigations between Harlan and Jon B, as the precious liquor licenses rested with Jon. Now Harlan has them, and the economy seems right, and that Highline thing is really bringing flocks of nice day people to the hood.

There were many flaws in Home and Guesthouse. I designed the places with my partner Marc Dizon with a total budget of around half a million dollars. Jon got a lot of bang for those few bucks. The legacy of Home and Guesthouse will be their survival for five years. They rode the wave of the model/bottle boom and crashed into the beach when the economy sagged and fair play and decency lagged in club/police relations. They were the last of the clubs to make “no fur” part of its dress code. They never were great clubs, but Jon B would always tell me that he was making more money than those more celebrated joints around him. The bottom line with Jon was always the bottom line. Why shouldn’t that be a reason to be cheerful and a mark of success? I will say that Jon prides himself in always paying his employees and honoring his debts. The closing of his clubs hadn’t really hit home to him as we spoke throughout yesterday. “I can’t believe it, but it’s been a pretty good run, and I’m proud of it,” he finally said.