Captains of hip Richard Born, Ira Drukier, Eric Goode, and Sean MacPherson’s plans for an East Village version of their Maritime Hotel doesn’t have its sea legs. They recently discovered why the half-completed sixteen-story building they’d bought on the corner of 3rd Street and Bowery was so much taller than anything around it. It turns out that the original developer got to build higher by saying it was going to be partly a dorm. When the city realized that there were never any students in this picture (and not likely to be any at the boutique hotel’s prices), it issued a stop-work order; the owners may even have to lop off a couple of stories. “The use for the top floors must be in compliance with the zoning resolutions,” says a Department of Buildings spokesperson. “Right now it’s not.” Until the “audit” is finished, the city is allowing work to continue on the lower floors. Born’s hoping for the best: “We took an ugly stucco building that was an eyesore and made it into a pretty building.” And though “there may be some changes and adjustments,” it’ll still open by the fall.

Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Beth Landman
• Table of Contents: Mar 27, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!