Traymore Stories

I discussed before different happenings and have shown a picture of the Traymore hotel with me and Claudia sitting in the sand (Stay tuned for more pictures).

I was in my home in Dayton, OH and in our lower level we had a pool room, opening into a large red brick patio with a stream running to its left, a dinner bell on a post and a large cast-iron stove that we used as a barbeque.

It was a Sunday afternoon and my family was there when the phone rang. It was a previous client that was in the wrecking business that told me he wanted to sell all the contents of the Traymore hotel that he was about to demolish.

I was somewhat surprised because in our last dealings we had many disputes but I thought who cares I’ll just handle this guy with kit gloves in order to get the job.

At my arrival to the hotel a day prior to its closing, I was walking through one of the floors determining where to house my employees. After selecting the proper floor I found the rooms were all connecting so I inadvertently opened all the connecting doors so I could walk through as my personnel checked in.

Well this might not have been a good idea because one of the maids outcall Hilda, kept closing the connecting doors. She’s been with the hotel for 35 years so instead of explaining to her and letting the cat out of the bag that the hotel was closing the next day I gave her a cock and balls story about how I like to exercise at night and didn’t want to walk up and down the halls. She turned out to be one of our special people during the sale.

That same evening, I went upstairs to the cocktail lounge to have a cocktail. Earlier that day I was talking to the general manager and point person in his office, his phone rang and I could hear him tell the caller to just break all the bottles and close up the wine room.

After he hung up, he explained to me that there was a large amount of alcohol that he wanted to destroy because he didn’t want to give it to his employees in fear that they might get drunk and have an accident or something. I shrugged it off as if I wasn’t too interested even though I was really impressed and I hated to see such a catastrophe being a big martini drinker myself.

Back to the cocktail lounge. I noticed even the bartender didn’t know this event was going to happen and I was trying to think of a way to salvage some of this tanquerae gin etc. I called the bartender over and told him I wanted to order a large supply of booze to my room, I was ordering it by the bottle and he was trying to explain that I’d have to be charged per drink. I let him know that I could afford it and to have it delivered to my room anyways with plenty of ice because I had many guests coming.

What I was trying to do was get that alcohol out of the wine cellar before the manager had it smashed up and I did.

I vividly remember at the close of the sale when we were winding down our business the manager asked me what this 1,600 dollar liquor bill was. I explained to him what I did and he laughed and tore up the invoice. That was the beginning of many events of a 2 month liquidating period.

The first big problem was I bought the goods (FF&E) for 200,000 dollars. The problem was I recouped my 200,000 dollars in the first 2 days of the sale. This surprised me to death but it really pissed off the owner and he did everything he could to squash the sale.

He called the licensing department and tried to get my mercantile license revoked so that I couldn’t have the entrance on the boardwalk but instead at the side doors. He purposely shut down some of the elevators several times and almost every evening he went through the building with a broom breaking up all overhead lighting. The other problem I had with him is he started deleting everything that was specifically spelled out from my inventory from the sale and claiming it to be his.

This came to a conclusion when I was sued after the sale for all the goods that were not on the inventory in which I sold. Now remember the premise of the contract was all the FF&E used to operate the hotel was included in the purchase price.

I got my attorney in Dayton to fly down with me to the court proceedings in order to protect my interests. The owner and his council kept stressing that if it’s not part of the contract it shouldn’t be available to be sold and I stressed the opposite.

I told my attorney to keep pressing the issue of it had to be listed on the contract or it was not a valid sale.

I kept pressing this issue because during my inventory and appraisal I mistakenly listed 3,000 stacked chairs at 10 dollars each twice on the itemized list of the contents so when the time was right my attorney brought up the fact that the contract stated 6,000 stacked chairs and we could only find 3000. The owner and his council thought they had the deal all wrapped up but since they didn’t have the 6000 chairs that was on the contract the judge ruled in my favor and ordered that $30,000 be paid to the defendant Clem Long.

The owner came over to me after the trial and started raising hell and I told him go piss up a tree he replied stand up. I was given my check and it was the last I’ve heard from him.

He is a feisty 80 year old geezer, and weighted about 90 lbs, a real sharp dresser but I have learned from before to do business with him at arms distance.

I can remember when his demolition permit was still pending and would be canceled if he didn’t start demolition immediately. He was explaining this to me and then he told one of his laborers to get a wheel borrow and a sledge hammer and go out to the corner of the building on the boardwalk and start hitting the building, this was in fact the beginning of the demolition.

There were a lot of other happenings that I’d like to reveal in the book. Like how one night me and my president were out drinking and didn’t get back to the hotel until 3am only to find police officers there loading up furniture and tvs onto a truck. I was completely spell bound and wanted to call my security man and raise hell but after I thought about it I wondered who he would call, the cops!?! I didn’t make a production out of it but certainly got better security afterwards.

What burnt me up was throughout the sale the fire department police department and other civic groups kept calling for donations of furniture and tv’s for their people and dumb me I obliged by donating thousands of dollars in furniture to their foundation.

Another thing was 3 days before we took possession they were having a doctors convention and evidently one of the doctors didn’t know we were preparing for a liquidation and when he came down to check out he found no one behind registration desk (cashier) and all this furniture in the lobby. He wanted to know who to pay the bill to and I remember telling him to forget about it.

I’m going to be able to include some of the weird pictures we got of this sale including pictures of the actual implosion and how all that came about.

So keep an eye on the blog and buy my book. I’d also like to thank the many people who have took the time to respond to my blog. Keep the comments coming I appreciate the feedback.

Clem Long
Founder of National Content Liquidators