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.”