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"I thought it would be fun to have each floor a different color," says Blouin-Ito. Her tenants had a different idea of fun. In fact, several regard the mustard color as a form of harassment (not to mention their feelings on the orange).
"Circus colors," comments one resident.
"If you know anything about colors," explains another, "this is designed to make people feel uncomfortable."
Williamson, the beloved former janitor, puts it a bit more colorfully:
"When all this renovation is done, one of these doors will open, and out will come the devil and say, 'Thank you Mrs. Ito, I just needed the orange door to come up from hell.' "
Following the grandiose misstep of issuing and rescinding a 30-day eviction notice, the Itos decided that if they could not remove the residents from the building, they would work around them. Or, perhaps, over and through them.
As rooms become vacant at Vantaggio Suites, they are painted and furnished with twin beds, a desk, and a minirefrigerator. The construction work brings a flurry of workmen, dust, and hammering. The disturbances were alternately used by management and residents as a motivational tool.
Dowd and some of the other residents took the matter to the Rent Board, complaining that at one point the building's heat was turned off for a three-day stretch. But the Itos were still within the law in renovating the building. And there was no proof of the kind of harassment designed to drive out tenants that has made for famous legal cases in San Francisco.
Even the most stubborn of residents can't complain about how much nicer the building exterior looks, now that it's repaired and repainted. At least, they couldn't complain until one anxious day when the old Gotham Hotel sign -- something that resembled a blue cloud, with the former neon lettering replaced with paint -- was removed and broken into pieces. It was replaced with a sleek-looking Vantaggio Suites logo on the side of the building.
Finally, in May, Mary Dowd moved out of the building. If the Itos were trying to lose their old tenants, they had just scored a major victory. If Dowd was looking for a cause to champion, she had found it. Within weeks, Dowd filed a lawsuit against the Itos charging them with harassment. The matter is pending in Superior Court.
Beginning about April, the newly vacated, renovated rooms of what had been the Gotham Hotel were filled primarily by foreign students studying English at private language schools.
"This is a back-door conversion," Marsteller, the resident counselor, says. "And the net result of what has happened here is very similar to what is happening in the city. We have 114 units that have been removed from the San Francisco market and are no longer affordable.
"It's kind of remarkable that there could be such a dramatic difference from just last February."
A new mailbox roster posted inside 835 Turk St. lists the new tenants of Vantaggio Suites separately from the old Gotham tenants. The roster tells more than mailbox assignments. It's indicative of the state of affairs at the former Gotham.
There now are two different worlds existing simultaneously inside the building. Vantaggio Suites offers full-service, furnished rooms, virtually identical to the operation in San Diego, except for the price:
A single room rents for $800 a month. Larger rooms with twin beds rent for $1,100, which is to say, $550 a person with the required double occupancy (management books roommates). Maid service and breakfast is provided for the new Vantaggio Suites residents. The phone lines in the renovated rooms are connected through a central switchboard. The former manager's apartment is now a community kitchen and computer room, for the exclusive use of the new tenants.
Meanwhile, about 40 of the original tenants of the Gotham continue to pay their old rents, occupy old rooms in an otherwise new building, and wonder what's going to happen next.
"I can't help but think that, logically speaking, the new rents would argue that we're on our way out," says Marsteller. "I'm certainly feeling like they would be happy if we left. And from their economic standpoint, I can understand why."
Indeed, were this virtually any other city on the planet, the events at the Gotham during the past six months would not have raised an eyebrow. Were the Itos still in San Diego, the conversion they have wrought would have caused no legal problems whatsoever -- that city doesn't even have an agency that oversees property management. But this is not any other city -- a fact of which the Itos are now keenly aware. In fact, it's easy to get the impression that had she known how much bureaucracy, litigation, and politics would descend on Vantaggio Suites, Claire Blouin-Ito would never have come to San Francisco.
"France, socialist country, is not like this," she says.
