{"id":2127,"date":"2007-02-21T10:16:59","date_gmt":"2007-02-21T18:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/02\/who_left_the_dogs_out.html"},"modified":"2007-02-21T10:16:59","modified_gmt":"2007-02-21T18:16:59","slug":"who_left_the_do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/02\/who_left_the_do.html","title":{"rendered":"Who Left The Dogs Out?*"},"content":{"rendered":"

The esteemed Hotel Pennsylvania may close, leaving hundreds of Westminster dogs in the lurch and affording the Observer the opportunity to gratuitously mention “doggie style” in a headline<\/a> (“Doomed Hotel Penn Sends Other Lodges Scrambling for Doggie Style” . . . ew!):<\/p>\n

This year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show was likely your last chance to romp around the wood-chip-covered “Green Room.” Or to leave your own personal mark on the bleach-stained carpets that line the loathsome two-star hotel’s hallways\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor, better yet, on hotel flack turned “doggie concierge” Jerry Grymek’s pant leg.<\/p>\n

The landmark hotel, which every year reserves its best service strictly for four-legged guests, may be history even before next year’s show.<\/p>\n

A report last month by brokerage Grubb & Ellis indicated that Vornado Realty Trust, which owns the longstanding hotel site, plans to demolish the swing-era monument and erect an enormous office tower in its place. No pets allowed!<\/p>\n

Vornado has been unabashedly unimpressed by the dog show’s unofficial host hotel for years, likening the building in a company report to “a placeholder, sort of like a parking lot” — which might help to explain the staff’s longstanding no-fear policy when it comes to fur balls.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But for every door that closes — into, say, a dark, dank, bedbug-infested room — another opens. Meaning, of course, that some dog-friendly hotelier could, er, clean up next year:<\/p>\n

Shuttering the overly pet-friendly Hotel Penn will create a significant shortage in kennel-club-worthy rooms citywide, given the more than 1,000 dogs that reportedly roamed the 1,700-room venue this year.<\/p>\n

“A lot of hotels in the area, they don’t take dogs,” Ms. Williams noted, “so it becomes a problem for people who come from out of town.”<\/p>\n

In fact, only 12 of the 19 hotels recommended on Westminster’s Web site even allow dogs — make that 11 of 18 if you take away the Hotel Penn. (The other seven suggested are presumably for mere spectators.) And three of those so-called dog-friendly venues will only accept pooches up to a certain size. The Park Lane, for instance, won’t shelter pets larger than 10 pounds; Springer spaniels like “Best in Show” winner Felicity’s Diamond Jim would be left out in the cold.<\/p>\n

None of the others are as big or as conveniently located as the Pennsylvania, which sits just across the street from the dog show’s home for decades, Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

Even doubling up, those 1,000 displaced dogs would utterly overwhelm the nearby 532-room Radisson, located a mere block away along West 34th Street; it hosted a comparatively minor 200 or so dogs last week.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*See, now isn’t a family-friendly<\/em> Baha Men reference so<\/em> much nicer than a crude sexual reference?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The esteemed Hotel Pennsylvania may close, leaving hundreds of Westminster dogs in the lurch and affording the Observer the opportunity to gratuitously mention “doggie style” in a headline (“Doomed Hotel Penn Sends Other Lodges Scrambling for Doggie Style” . . . ew!): This year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show was likely your last chance to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real_estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}