SUIT ALLEGES DRAKE NO LONGER JEWEL OF A HOTEL
By: Jon Anderson and Andrew Fegelman March 14, 1996
(Chicago Tribune) - Long the grande dame of Chicago hotels, the Drake Hotel, the 535-room Gold Coast palace where Queen Elizabeth II once stayed, is having its image tarnished by an insider.
Outside evaluators still rave about the venerable hotel, but a lawsuit filed this week accuses the Drake’s managers of putting “mismatched furniture” in bedrooms, downgrading china and crystal service in its dining rooms, using bedspreads that had become “faded and worn”, and allowing “dead flies to be seen in the showers”.
Like many an Old Wealth drama, the plot line is complicated.
In a nutshell, the people who once owned the Drake and who still own the land, are suing the people who own the building and rent the land, claiming they have let the Drake’s high standards slip.
“All I can say is that the hotel is in good condition,” countered hotel manager John Lovell. “We have spent several million dollars upgrading it in the past several years.”
The hotel also issued a statement expressing “outrage” at the allegations, which are “without merit and will be vigorously opposed.”
Indeed, a visitor making a spot check of the Drake would have found no spots Wednesday in the hotel’s public areas. Fountain waters burbled cleanly in the massive flower-bedecked lobby. Rugs were clean. A men’s room on the main floor was in good order, and two men on stepladders were busily polishing chandeliers in a back hallway.
But among its eagle-eyed neighbors, who have watched the rich and famous trek in since the place opened on New Year’s Eve in 1920, there were discreet murmurings that perhaps there had been some slippage in standards since the days when Edith Rockefeller McCormick checked into a suite and, content with the service, stayed for three years.
Drake supporters note that the hotel has maintained its ratings; inspectors for the Mobil Guide gave it a top four-star listing in their 1996 review.
But along the Gold Coast, others talked of breakfast trays with egg remains and mussed-up napkins left too long outside room doors. Of old-fashioned laundry carts jamming the hallways. Of musty smells in the rooms. Of the switch of Sir Georg and Lady Valerie Solti, longtime Drake habitues, to the Four Seasons.
“It’s still the grande hotel,” said one resident of the next-door Drake Tower who has noticed worn carpets in one area, “but it would be nice if they really kept it up.”
In legal terms, according to a 25-page lawsuit filed Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court, the hotel’s landlord - a private trust overseen by LaSalle National Trust - is suing the hotel’s operator - a trust overseen by American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago.
The partnership that runs the Drake is responsible for hotel maintenance, the suit says, and has violated that agreement by falling down on upkeep. That failure, the suit adds, has been costly. Gross revenues, it is alleged, have fallen by about $4 million a year.
“The parties tried to work out their differences and failed”, said lawyer Thomas Reynolds III, explaining the suit filed by his clients. Those clients include Stanley Brashears, whose family once owned the hotel, which was designed by architect Benjamin Marshall, whose wife was a great-aunt of Brashears’ grandmother.
The Brashears era ended in 1979 when the hotel, but not the land, was sold to a group headed by developers Edward Ross and Jerry Wexler who, in 1980, turned the running of the hotel over to Hilton International.
At the time, Ross and Wexler said they intended to operate the Drake as “the most prestigious hotel in Chicago,” pledging to maintain its “character, service and staff.” The suit, which pits Brashears against Ross and the heirs of Wexler, who died in 1992, alleges that their efforts have fallen short.
To gather evidence about what was needed to be done to restore the grandeur of the hotel, the landlord team commissioned a study in December 1993. The inspection proved difficult, the lawsuit notes, because management wouldn’t let the inspectors freely examine the whole building.
What they did find, the suit says, was “an establishment that could no longer claim its place as one of the city’s premier hotels,” certainly not the glittering hostelerie it was on the night in 1959 when Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip stayed in the Sapphire Suite, set out with linen and hand towels identical to those in Buckingham Palace.
In the public dining rooms, inspectors found china had been replaced by Corelle dinnerware of “a nondescript pattern.” Standard stemware was used in place of “the etched glassware that once was one of the hotel’s trademarks.”
Corridor carpets were worn, the suit claims. In some rooms, refrigerators allegedly were dirty and in need of defrosting. Mini-bar doors reportedly were shut with duct tape, and some bathrooms were dirty, with the tile stained with mildew.
The estimated cost of renovating the building - a burden the suit says is the responsibility of the operators - has been placed at between $22 million and $26 million. The suit also alleges that the landlord is owed more than $360,000 in rent and asks that the lease agreement with the hotel’s operators be severed.
It’s still a great place, but someone with imagination could do wonders,” observed one neighbor. “You could put an atrium over the ballroom - and a garden on the roof. It’s got such a wonderful view.”
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