Sat. July 30, 2016
New York City -
The OUT Hotel in New York City has been sold and will no longer cater to the LGBT community.
According to real estate blog The Real Deal, the OUT NYC – which includes the hotel, a restaurant and a nightclub – was sold for $40 million to Merchants Hospitality.
The sale comes roughly 14 months after its owners faced controversy for hosting a fundraiser at their Manhattan home for Texas Senator Ted Cruz's presidential campaign.
According to The New York Times, roughly a dozen people attended the dinner and "fireside chat" hosted by Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass, a former couple turned business partners.
The owners claimed that they were unaware of Cruz's opposition to LGBT rights and said that they supported Cruz's position on Israel.
As a boycott of their properties simmered, they vacillated between calling the fundraiser a mistake and defending it.
In an interview with New York magazine, Reisner added fuel to the fire when he suggested that the hotel was losing money because gay people are "cheap."
"My only point is, this has not been a profitable venture," he said. "Gays are cheap. They're frugal; gays are frugal. Let me retract that ...gays are entitled. ...Do you know how challenging it is to make a penny off a gay person? I'm gay, I don't pay cover. I'm gay, where's my comp drink? [Everyone laughs.] No, I'm being serious! The OUT NYC has not shown a profit yet."
Editor's note: Reisner in 2013 proposed The OUT Chicago, "straight-friendly" boutique hotel to be located in the 3300 block of Halsted in Boystown. The project never got off the ground after a number of neighborhood groups rejected the $30 million development.
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