Page 2 of 5
A tall man with a calm voice and a kind face, Marsteller makes his living as a counselor, something easily discerned within minutes of listening to the soothing tones and careful words in which he speaks. Marsteller immediately concerned himself with quashing the panic among his neighbors.
Within days, a tenants' organization was formed. The first meeting garnered a nearly 90 percent turnout. The residents had kept pretty much to themselves. Suddenly, they were bonded by fear. Representatives from Westside Community Mental Health Center were standing by.
"A lot of people went into anxiety or depression," says Marsteller. "Losing your house is high on the hit parade of stressors."
Some people did leave, but others were nearly ready to barricade themselves in their rooms. The tenant group connected with city officials, advisers, and an attorney.
In short order, Ito came face to face with the San Francisco rent ordinances that prevent this kind of mass eviction, and the weight of the political pressure that is behind those laws. Five days after the original notice, he issued a letter rescinding it and apologizing to tenants. His letter included the following bizarre explanation for the notice:
"I must admit, that after reading the letter again, that it does sound like we were trying to evict you. Please understand that this was not our intention at all. Instead, we are cordially requesting that you vacate the building for a short time due to the much needed renovation work that we are contemplating."
Ito is a well-mannered man of impeccable dress -- the kind of guy who smiles politely while discussing eviction. And, despite a slight language barrier, he seems quite well-versed in the tenets of business. Yet nothing had prepared him for San Francisco. The group of assistant managers and transition consultants who arrived with him seemed to come and go through a revolving door during the first couple of months.
In March, Ito held meetings with the residents. Because his assistants were American and spoke better English than he, Ito thought they might make good ambassadors to explain the renovation work and answer questions. But it was too late. By this time, residents no longer trusted anything Ito, or anyone in his employ, had to say. He wanted them out, and they knew it.
"I wasn't going to talk to them," says Mary Dowd, who had lived at the Gotham for about six months before the change in management. "They were trying to get me out. I didn't trust them."
Dowd is a woman small in stature and big in persistence, with a toss of red hair, a British accent that makes nearly everything she says sound all the more formal, and a low tolerance for annoyance, regardless of how mundane. She wasn't about to take this easily. And as the crusade escalated, everything became an issue at the Gotham.
She and a small band of residents fired off complaints to the San Francisco Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board, Supervisor Tom Ammiano, and Mayor Willie Brown. Dowd began demanding to see permits for painting and other work in the building.
But activism couldn't stop some of the things that had already begun to change at the Gotham. Robb Williamson, the hotel's resident maintenance man for more than a decade, was let go the day before the Itos came on board, causing immediate angst on several floors.
Williamson has both entertained and looked after his neighbors for years. His theatrical repartee and gossipy mannerisms are clearly performance art, while the tiny room where he's lived for the past 12 years is filled with work in other media. There's his pastel oil painting of San Francisco, part of which glows in the dark; the three-dimensional desert scene, complete with the cacti, fashioned from a shower curtain; and, of course, the diamond-shaped, plastic hotel key chains painted with minilandscapes.
Inside the guy who calls himself a "desk clerk fatale" is a truly neighborly person from the Midwest, who wouldn't think twice about helping someone in need.
In short, he'd become as much a fixture here as the gingerbread that decorated the ceilings. His dismissal (Williamson still lives in the building) was the first clue to the coming changes that these residents were not going to like.
"[The former manager] told me, 'Robb they are going to try to get everyone out of here.' And I said that well, they can try, but many have found that my butt is like a crop of corn: It's planted for spring."
Neighbors took up a collection for Williamson immediately after he was fired. And, Dowd makes a point of mentioning, "people were very generous." After all, the new managers had let go the man who knew as much about the ghost on the second floor as anyone.
Gotham legend has it that there were two gangland hits at the hotel shortly after it opened in the 1920s; the murders supposedly contributed to keeping away the tourist business. The wandering hotel ghost is assumed to be linked to one of these murders.
"He comes out of one of the rooms on the second floor, looks up and down the hallway, and leaves out the fire escape," Williamson explains matter-of-factly. "He usually comes out around 7 or 8 p.m., Thursdays or Fridays, somewhere toward the end of the week. Others have seen him. I'm not alone," Williamson muses.
"Not a very good hit man being out that early in the day, I'd guess."
Vantaggio Suites sent out a blitz of notices during February and March.
There were notices about pest control spraying (something that was sorely needed). Workmen would be entering rooms to "check the window mobility." Others would come to paint the windowsills. Any residents entering unoccupied units, one slightly ominous notice vowed, would be considered trespassing.
