Bill de Blasio is renovating his Park Slope home and is now living in a hotel. According to the New York Post, rather than sublet a place — or renovate room by room and live in the mayhem of construction rubble — the de Blasios have inexplicably decided to move into a suite at the Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge for the past four months. While the Post is burning de Blasio for his “swanky” accommodations, it seems to me he’s actually living the life of a mid-tier businessman in town for a trade show on vinyl flooring fueled by continental breakfasts. (As one succinct Yelp reviewer wrote of the hotel, “Stayed here a few nights while attending a nearby conference, and it was a pretty standard Marriott.”)
The Post strongly suggests de Blasio is getting some kind of a deal, pointing out that the hotel is owned by Muss Development, a real-estate company that won a number of city contracts during the former mayor’s tenure, but has no reporting to substantiate the claim. (Both de Blasio and hotel management declined to comment to the Post on whether he was getting a discounted stay, while a Muss Development spokesperson said they were “not involved with specific guests’ accommodations.”) De Blasio’s suite is apparently one of the hotel’s more “modest” ones, containing a bedroom and a living room. (This is certainly more modest than subletting an actual apartment, which could have a wide array of rooms.)
Potentially fishy deals aside, it is perhaps fitting that de Blasio has decided to cap his post-mayoral life with an extended stay in one of the most average hotel chains in America. The real question is where de Blasio is working out — the downtown Brooklyn Marriott does have a gym, but the Park Slope YMCA is only a 20-minute black-car ride away.
