The Place to Be Scene : Guests Schmooze and Snooze at N.Y.’s Chichi Newcomer, the Paramount

NEW YORK —  Ian Schrager has seen the future of New York night life, and it is . . . hotels.

The onetime nightclub impresario who, with his late partner Steve Rubell, created Studio 54, the decadent disco den of the ‘70s, and Palladium, the supermarket-sized dance palace of the ‘80s, has now set his sights on hotels as the place to see and be seen.

Actually, one hotel in particular--his latest venture, the Paramount. Already owners of two mid-town Manhattan hotels, Morgans and the Royalton, Schrager and Rubell bought the old Century Paramount on West 46th Street just off Broadway in 1986.

The name was chopped in half, iconoclastic French designer Philippe Starck was hired to do the post-modern interiors and in August it opened, offering rooms starting at $90 a night--an amazing bargain for a new, stylish mid-town hotel.

But it’s what Schrager has yet to add to the 610-room hotel that will likely cause the hip trendies to take notice: a nightclub run by French nightclub owner Huberts of Le Bain Douche, a Brian McNally restaurant (he of the fashionable eateries 150 Wooster and The Canal Bar) and a Dean & DeLuca gourmet shop.

“This is really an attempt to blur the distinction between restaurants, nightclubs, health spas, coffee shops and delicatessens,” says the intense, compact Schrager. “It’s redefining public space and how we spend our leisure time, really reinventing all of that, so that this is meant to be more than a place to sleep.”

None of Schrager and Rubell’s hotels were ever meant to be just a place to sleep. They opened Morgans in 1983, had French designer Andree Putman do the minimalist interiors and watched it quickly become the hotel/hangout for rock stars, actors and other ultra-cool types passing through town.

The Royalton, also designed by Starck and opened two years ago, fast acquired its own cachet, with the bar and restaurant known as the place to see and be seen. Both offer rooms starting at $190 a night.

Their success as hoteliers came after both spent brief stints in prison for tax evasion during the Studio 54 days in 1980 and 1981. They became New York’s comeback kids, their contacts with the city’s glitterati intact, their names still associated with nouveau glamour and cutting-edge chic.

Rubell’s death in July, 1989, at age 45 of complications from hepatitis was a devastating blow to his friend and partner. The two were an inseparable yin-yang team--Rubell the outgoing schmoozer, Schrager the more introverted partner who took care of business.

The Paramount, Schrager’s first solo venture, is arguably New York’s most talked-about new hotel, currently the darling of design magazine editors who gush over its innovative use of marble, concrete and curvaceous, sensuous furniture.

There’s a children’s play room designed by “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” design director Gary Panter. The lobby boasts a fun-house mirror. Elevators are bathed in emerald, ruby, amber or indigo lights and the rooms sport stainless-steel conical sinks.

The cleaning crew resembles black-capped Maoists. The staff wears black double-breasted suits and white T-shirts. Hired from “casting calls,” they are chosen not because they have experience in hotel work (Schrager prefers that they don’t), but, he says, because of their look (quirky beauty and elegance) and “that thing in people that makes them enjoy making other people better.”

Said one bemused guest, “It’s like living in an Obsession ad.”

Schrager hears that and chuckles, but he’s obviously pleased with the image. He sits in the hotel’s second-floor restaurant/bar dressed in a white shirt and navy pants, lamenting the fact that New Yorkers don’t frequent hotels the way Angelenos do deals at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge, or Parisians do lunch at the Plaza Athenee.

“Twenty-five years ago when New York hotels had great entertainment, (people) went,” he said. “But the entertainers started appearing in Vegas, and that stopped. The Royalton was an effort to get that going again. And this is trying to do it even more.”

He’s a man who doesn’t believe in marketing research, who’d rather let intuition guide him in business decisions. Lately intuition has been telling him that New Yorkers “want something; there’s a mood in the air. We don’t tell people what they want, they tell us. (Schrager frequently uses “we” when referring to himself and Rubell.) If you come to a hotel, you want to go to the restaurant where everyone in New York is going. Doesn’t it make sense that the restaurant would be in this hotel? And doesn’t it make sense that when you come to New York that the best nightclub also be in the hotel?”

In recent years, New York has seen its night life evolve from underground clubs to intimate supper clubs, the restaurants-as-theater trend and, currently, a retro flashback to ‘70s-style mega-discos.

Schrager’s current take on the city’s night life is that “it lacks direction. It lacks focus, energy. There are a lot of problems, unfortunately, that come with nightclubs--the drugs, the traffic, and I think the politicians have been dealing with the problem by making it more difficult to open up nightclubs.

“I think they’re essential. . . . I went around to a bunch of clubs last Friday and there’s no glamour, there’s no mix of people. It troubles me a little bit. I would like to get night life jump-started, with Brian McNally and Huberts and what we hope to have here with this great big living room, this great big salon. It doesn’t take much to get a momentum going.”

Schrager orders an espresso and takes exactly one sip in the course of an hour.

Does he miss the nightclub business?

“No,” he says quickly. “The nightclub business did well for Steve and me, but basically it taught us a number of things that prepared us for the hotel business. We learned to create magic, because you really don’t have anything but the magic. We’re still trying to create magic here, the only thing is that we have a product. . . . But the way I think about the nightclub business is a little bit the way I think about high school. It was great, I have fond memories of it, but it’s over with and I have no desire to be in it.”

Nor does he have any desire to have doormen acting as the high priests of the velvet ropes, re-creating the imperious door policy that was part of Studio 54’s allure.

“I want something with longevity,” Schrager says. “I’m not interested in having lines outside to come in. That’s over with. People won’t take it. I’m 44 years old and I’m really not interested in that thing myself anymore. I don’t think it will be wild and abandoned and indulgent, I think it’ll be a little more civil, somewhere between what’s going on in a salon, in a gallery opening, perhaps a cocktail party.”

Schrager is well aware that the club could be a white-hot success one minute, a has-been, B-list nightspot the next. Already the hotel itself is generating enough press to be doing warp speed toward over-hype, and he’s thought about what the fallout could be.

“I don’t think it’ll be a club with nothing but magic. . . . What we’re trying to do is bring in products that last,” he says. “Like if you have good food, like the Copacabana had in the ‘40s. If you have really intelligent, hip entertainment policy that doesn’t necessarily mean big-name entertainers. It will last because you’re providing a service to people. People need places to go out to.”

He calls the hotel a “friendly oasis” where the concierge can guide you to the kind of restaurant where you’d feel comfortable, where you can trade workout tips with the bellman, who looks like an Armani model.

But behind the new and improved egalitarian Schrager lurks a glimmer of the old days. You glimpse it when you ask about why there is no “Paramount” sign outside the hotel. In fact, there is nothing marking its existence save two clay flower pots placed just outside the entrance.

“I didn’t put the name outside because I still feel that if you don’t know where the hotel is, you shouldn’t be here,” he explains. “I don’t mean it in an arrogant way. The only reason to have a light or something is to mark the spot. But you don’t have to say ‘Paramount.’ ”

And what about the guests hanging out in the lobby wearing Bermuda shorts, dark socks and sandals who look like tourists just plucked from Central Casting?

“I call them Norman Rockwell people,” he confesses. “I want people who come here to appreciate what we did. And some of the people here right now, they wouldn’t care if I didn’t even let them in the lobby, they want their room at the low price. . . . I want the same people who go to Morgans and the Royalton; fashion people, entertainment people, a big bicoastal crowd, Europeans. For people who are used to spending $100 at Howard Johnson, I didn’t make this effort for them. It’s making style accessible to people (who appreciate it). I think it’s such a modern thing to do that. It’s in the air now.”

Brian McNally, who has yet to decide just what kind of restaurant he’ll open at the Paramount, applauds the hotel’s hodgepodge of clientele.

“I think New York needs that kind of thing,” he says. “It’s sort of fragmented and polarized to a certain extent. People who wear leather jackets go to one place, and people who wear blue shoes go to another. A hotel is the only place where you see people coming in, and that’s a very nice thing. You can’t re-create Dorothy Parker. Those people don’t exist anymore. But there should be a natural place for people to meet.

“And there’s nothing wrong with Norman Rockwell types,” he says. “If you make the hotel exclusive, it doesn’t work. You should never have to worry about who’s at the next table; why not just go there and have a good time?”

New York night-life habitues and scene-watchers pretty much agree that Schrager has yet another hit on his hands, but wonder whether he’ll able to sustain its chichi status.

“I think Ian Schrager’s brilliant when it comes to creating atmosphere, which is what New Yorkers are pretty much into,” says social observer Jonathan Van Meter.

“It depends on what you seek in night life, whether you enjoy that or not. There are definitely enough people here who like that stark, dramatic post-modern thing that Philippe Starck did. It really draws a crowd. . . . It’s a beautiful crowd, almost painfully chic. It’s the perfect backdrop for people to be in, making deals and being glamorous.

“The thing that might save it from being a flash in the pan is that it is a design and architectural wonder. Maybe it’ll develop into a Four Seasons kind of thing, a power place. As a trendy night-life spot, I don’t think anything has staying power anymore.”

Yet the Schrager name still carries clout, Van Meter says.

“When you hear that name is attached to something, it pricks up your ears and makes you want to check it out. It’s a respect he gets. There are a handful of people in New York--McNally is one of them, Schrager is another--sort of impresarios, and anything these people do, they have staying power.”