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Carousel Rebounds, Dazzles Once More
 | | Stephen Cherry | | Along the Carousel's newly landscaped beach front, palm trees and exotic shrubs grow. |
Mold and mildew hung like so much moss from the rafters high above the indoor ice rink. Rainwater gushed through holes in ceilings in some rooms. Beds and desks and night tables had disappeared from others. Stairs creaked and moaned and sagged when you walked on them.
On that sunny afternoon in the summer of 1999, Michael James shuddered, his eyes wide with the sort of vacant stare you see at disaster scenes, and tried to comprehend the unthinkable. He had always known this place, the Carousel Hotel, as the grandest of them all in Ocean City. He had considered it a privilege to work here in the early ‘80s, starting out delivering meals to rooms, then moving up to waiter and recreation director. Here, too, at a Christmas party in 1986, he met his wife, Marilyn (though there remains some debate about who had been staring at whom).
How, he wondered on that day in 1999, could anybody let this happen to the Carousel? "I mean, this place put Ocean City on the map; it was the premier hotel in Ocean City. It was a landmark, the place to stay," he says. "And then; by ’99, it was the last place you’d want to stay."
Less than three years later, Michael James is back at the Carousel – this time, as its general manager – and the newly renovated grande dame of Ocean City hotels is back in a big way. What was old is new again, and the word’s out: Advance bookings for the summer have hit record levels, James says, with more than a little pride, and the 2002 season could well be the strongest in the Carousel’s 40-year history.
The Carousel’s comeback under its current owner, Bethesda-based Hospitality Partners, astonished even some of the biggest fans of the Ocean City landmark. It had deteriorated so much under its former owner, Four Star Enterprises Ltd. Partnership of Scranton, Pa., that some doubted it would ever recover.
Four Star and its principal owner, heart surgeon Dr. Siamak Hamzavi, had battled for years with the Carousel’s condominium association, which accused him of failing to maintain the property and not paying dues on 22 units he owned. Within two years of Four Star’s 1995 purchase of the Carousel, city inspectors cited the hotel for rampant fire and building code violations, and the condo association later paid $2.5 million to replace the crumbling west wall of the complex.
After a Worcester County judge ordered Four Star to pay $3.3 million to satisfy liens and make court-ordered repairs in 1999, Hamzavi declared bankruptcy. A few months later, a lengthy legal battle ended with the purchase of the hotel by the association, which acted as a receiver.
Hospitality Partners blamed the dispute in part on separate management of the hotel, operated by Four Star, and the condos, controlled by the association, James says. Thus, when the hotel-management company bought the complex in March 2000, it insisted on managing both the 237-room hotel as well as the 190 condos under separate contracts.
Renovations, Repairs Cost $7 Million
 | | Stephen Cherry | | Paintings of carousel horses decorate the hotel's atrium. |
Reviving the sprawling 118th Street complex, renamed the Carousel Resort Hotel & Condominiums, didn’t come cheaply or easily. Since purchasing the hotel in March 2000 for $7.75 million, Hospitality Partners has sunk more than $7 million into repairs and renovation.
Restoration began with intensive rehabilitation necessary to make the place habitable again – replacing unstable stairways, installing a new hot water heating system, waterproofing the entire complex, adding a new, $1 million roof.
Armies of workers painted and redecorated inside and out, renovated bathrooms, laid new carpeting in all the public areas, overhauled the lobby and atrium and replaced hotel room furniture, beds and televisions. The new, oceanfront Seasons Restaurant overlooks dunes and a newly landscaped, grassy beachfront where palm trees grow and a 17-foot-long replica of a pirate ship beckons kids.
James recalls the months of working 80-hour weeks to prepare for the reopening two years ago. His son, Matthew, now 9, missed him so much, he started tagging along to work with his dad. "I was feeling like I was jumping into a fire," James says, "and I started thinking maybe taking this on wasn’t the smartest move."
But such misgivings proved no match for the intensity of this dream James had harbored for most of a decade: to return to run the Carousel, a place steeped in lore and legend ever since political operative Bobby Baker opened it in 1962 as a hideaway for Washington power brokers.
James knows the history well and says he feels a strong connection with the hotel’s roots. In his office, a hand-carved wooden carousel horse and gold-colored trim from the original Carousel nightclub adorn the walls. Bobby Baker stares out from the cover of a fading copy of Life magazine from November 1963 that sits on a table. ("Bobby Baker’s Bombshell," reads the headline to a cover story about an investigation centering on fraud and tax evasion allegations facing Baker.)
Carousel brochures spanning four decades – guests sporting sideburns and miniskirts and hideous leisure suits – fill James’ desk drawers and shelves of a closet.
From the start, James knows, the Carousel did everything on a grand scale. Baker, an aide to Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, hired Washington public relations gurus to promote his new hotel. On opening night, Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, turned out. So, too, did congressmen, who came in a fleet of limos Baker rented, and seven busloads of Washington dignitaries, who swilled champagne on the way to the beach.
LBJ, congressmen, business tycoons and other Washington insiders kept coming back to "Bobby Baker’s Carousel." It boasted bigger rooms and a better restaurant than other hotels – and a nightclub that became the stuff of legends. Then there was a "gentleman’s club," where, James says, "It was difficult to get into unless you knew somebody." Whether high-priced prostitutes worked the room is a matter of endless speculation and debate even now.
Baker's Vision Becomes Reality
In the then-desolate stretch of Ocean City - the resort ended around 40th Street at the time - Baker foresaw the coming boom and wanted to expand the Carousel by adding a condo tower. He moved to town and worked obsessively, night and day, doing everything from bookkeeping to bartending to cleaning, while his five children served as busboys, bellhops and front-desk clerks.
But controversy shadowed Baker and the Carousel constantly. With the hotel project struggling financially, a Baker partner in the venture committed suicide. The hotel’s bookkeeper, a longtime Baker acquaintance, died when a small plane she was in buzzed the hotel on a Sunday afternoon in 1965, then plunged into the Atlantic. This did nothing to quell the rampant speculation about wild parties, decadence and debauchery at the Carousel.
Then, in 1966, a federal indictment that would ultimately lead to his imprisonment charged Baker with tax evasion and fraud, in part over loans arranged by Sen. Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. These loans bankrolled construction of the Carousel.
The less-than-stellar publicity notwithstanding, Bobby Baker enjoyed celebrity status as a pioneer and a gregarious entrepreneur who foresaw, and helped create, Ocean City’s future. Some locals even suggested he run for mayor. Everybody called his place in the sand "Bobby Baker’s Carousel." Some old-timers still do.
Subsequent owners realized Baker’s vision in the 1970s - building the 21-story condominium, one of the first high-rises on what would become "Condo Row." And the Carousel maintained Baker’s flair for the dramatic, with construction of the soaring glass-and-steel atrium connecting the hotel and the condos.
From Decadent Hideaway to Family Resort
The hotel’s history, James says, has taught him more than a little bit about how to make a splash and how to draw a crowd. Now the Carousel has grown up, and, like its original clientele, mellowed in middle age. It’s been famous and infamous, luxury resort and decrepit dive, decadent hideaway and now ... family resort.
"In the old days, it wasn’t really the kind of place you’d bring your family, but we’re turning that around," James says. "Now, we see families as our biggest market."
James relies on a trusted focus group of sorts – his son, Matthew, and his daughter, Maddie, who reaffirm his strategy constantly. They’re never bored, even on a rainy day, with all the diversions in and around the atrium. They can swim in the indoor pool, play games in the arcade, skate on the indoor ice rink (and even take lessons from a skating pro), exercise in the fitness center, grab pizza or cotton candy at the snack bar.
"With what we offer from a recreation standpoint - indoor pool, ice rink, game room and all in one self-contained atrium – no one can compete with us for that," James says. "And nobody ever has to cross six lanes of Coastal Highway to get to it all. There’s nothing between us and the beach."
Andrew Sellers couldn’t wait to skate at the beach. The 9-year-old came to the Carousel from Cape May Courthouse, N.J., with his family for his sister’s school band competition. Andrew had heard about the ice rink and packed his skates. So on the first night of the family’s stay, while his sister practiced playing her oboe, he practiced his moves beneath the gigantic American flag that hangs above the rink.
"He just loves to skate," says Andrew’s mother, Kathy Sellers, "and I don’t know of any other place where you can be right on the beach and ice skate too."
This summer, the ice comes to life with nightly performances in July and August by The Next Ice Age, the acclaimed ensemble of ice dancers that has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington and the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C. Guests will be able to dine at rink-side tables or sit under the palm by the canopied bar near the rink and take in the show.
Running a resort, James says, is part show biz, and he’s forever dreaming up new ways to entertain guests. Next, he wants to bring in a bit of the midway and the big top too, with nightly performances by clowns and magicians.
He’s already performed a feat so many had deemed impossible just a few years back.
Jerry Kroll, whose company publishes the Ocean City Family Discount Coupon Book, recalls how the Carousel’s downfall wounded Ocean City’s collective psyche. "The whole town was saddened to see what happened to the Carousel, and a lot of people gave it up as a goner," Kroll says. "It’s good to see it back."
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