One of modern history’s fastest “refugee” relocations happened when a small plane of illegal aliens touched down on Martha’s Vineyard. Within 36 hours, give or take; they’d been frog-marched away from the exclusive New England Isle of the Rich and Famous. New York City isn’t as lucky.
The Big Crapple was already in a sad state after years of misrule by Mayor Bill de Blasio. Eric Adams hasn’t improved a thing, but he is the benefactor of years of Democrat Party open borders policy, though not by choice. If he had things his way, they’d have all stayed along the border where he likely thinks they belong.
But in the name of equity, border Governors have included cities like New York in the bounty of “immigrants” accumulating in their states. Bussing of flying them to places like Chicago, Washington DC, and New York City. With nowhere to put them – in between rants about what horrible people those governors are – the City and Mayor Adams have had to put them up at local hotels, which is crimping the City’s style.
In May, New York City Mayor Eric Adams complained that 50% of the city’s hotel rooms are now occupied by illegal migrants. This is a massive loss in tourism dollars for the city.
As if the crime, homelessness, and drug problem were not. A local government official issued a travel warning for NYC just a few years ago. That’s still a thing, but now they’ve got drugs, crime, and destruction of property in the hotels. It’s very New York, as is fine dining at swanky lib-run eateries. But the City isn’t paying restaurant owners to feed illegals (yet), and despite their liberal rhetoric, they are not doing their part.
Earlier this month, the Redbury Hotel, a Manhattan landmark that’s home to two restaurants owned by Danny Meyer, began housing asylum seekers in partnership with New York City. On Friday, Union Square Hospitality Group announced that nine-year-resident restaurant, Marta and Maialino (vicino) — the newly relocated spot that started in the Gramercy Park Hotel — will have their last service on August 25.
It’s a dramatic move that comes as the hotel is the latest Manhattan property repurposing as housing for asylum seekers. The city is struggling to address an influx of at least 90,000 migrants from the southern border since last spring.
Danny Meyer was reportedly all-in on the Pandemic response, requiring proof of vaccination to work or eat in his establishments.
He has donated at least 178,000 dollars to Democrat candidates in a baker’s dozen years so it is safe to say he is all in on a liberal agenda from which he’d mostly sanitized himself until the open border and sanctuary city policies drove him out of the Redbury Hotel.
He’s no doubt suffered a loss of business, revenue, and profit as like-minded progressives have chosen to hide from the human casualties of liberal immigration policy on display at the Redbuty Hotel – where Meyer isn’t the only New York Elitist who is displaced morally and physically by the influx. But he can pretend.
As tenants of the Redbury, our two restaurants, which occupy the lobby floor, have been eagerly anticipating the hotel’s full post-pandemic reopening. Now, as the Redbury partners with the City to house asylum seekers, it’s become clear that the timeline for that reopening has been extended indefinitely. While we admire and respect the Redbury’s decision, the viability of our business relies significantly on hotel-related F&B operations, including event venues and the lobby bar, spaces that are now unavailable for our use.
I doubt The Redbury has many choices, forced to fill the rooms with illegals at reduced rates set by the City – which could threaten all manner of code violations unless it agrees. A sort of “I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it further” arrangement. They play ball, or the City considers more aggressive measures to take over the hotel and fill it anyway.
But it is a deal that Meyer, suffering the effect of the policies he claims to support, can escape, moral posturing intact, freed, at least temporarily, from the teeming unwashed that washed up upon his shore. It is an increasingly common problem for the Libs, Progs, and Dems.
The one-percenters living on Martha’s Vineyard, liberal elite if not to the last than at least in the majority, came face-to-face with that when the plane landed. Still, they rallied quickly and relocated the huddled masses to someone else’s backyard (Maybe even to The Redbury Hotel in New York City.), for which the Boston Globe awarded them Bostonians of the Year.
That is, after all, how Left-Wing Morality works. It works for them, or it doesn’t work at all.
HT | TGP
