The Crown & Anchor, a cornerstone of Provincetown's gay nightlife and entertainment scene, is changing hands next month.
That's according to Paul Benson of the Provincetown Independent.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke with Paul recently to learn more.
Gilda Geist What is the Crown & Anchor and what is its significance in Provincetown?
Paul Benson The Crown & Anchor is a nightclub and entertainment complex right in the heart of Commercial Street. It has six bars, three performance spaces, a restaurant, 17 hotel rooms and a swimming pool on the beach. It has been really at the center of a lot of gay entertainment, in particular the theme weeks that come to Provincetown in the summer—gay pride, bear week, women's week, carnival. A lot of those events rely on big dance parties that they'll hold in the Paramount Room and drag queen performances that happen at a lot of these different stages. It's just a really central place for the community.
GG Who were the previous owners of the Crown & Anchor, and do we know why they were selling?
PB Paolo Martini and Jonathan Hawkins bought the property in the fall of 2021 from the owners before, Rick Murray and Bill Dougal, who Jonathan had been working for for a while as an entertainment manager, a recruiter of talent and a performer himself. Four years is not all that long of a tenure, but Jonathan and Paolo did wind up divorcing. They originally filed last year and they told us in the story that they were actually looking for buyers even before that to pass on the property to another gay owner who would hold the values of the community in terms of a performance space, a space for artists and a space where people could come from all over the country and feel very comfortable.
GG Tell us about the new owner.
PB Tristan Schukraft owns a more than a hundred companies, he told us, the most famous of which is Mistr, which is responsible for about 20 percent of all of the PrEP—HIV prevention medication—that goes out through the mail in the country from AIDS services organizations and healthcare clinics around the country. In addition to that online platform, he's started buying hotel and bar properties in the last four years or so, including the Abbey in West Hollywood, a very famous venue. It's actually in the Pink Pony Club song, which is supposed to be about the Abbey. [He also owns] gay hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He's got a property in Rio de Janeiro and several in Fire Island, all before closing on the Crown & Anchor, which is set to happen in January.
GG What has the new owner said about any changes he plans to bring to the Crown & Anchor?
PB Tryst Puerto Vallarta is the first hotel property that has opened since Tristan Schukraft took it over. I haven't been, but it's supposed to be very sleek. There are still a lot of drag performances and people from all over the country flying in in the winter, mostly, to perform in Mexico. So he said that obviously performances are going to continue to be part of the Crown & Anchor. It's going to be a renovation, not a full rebuild. It's in the FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] velocity zone. You really can't do full rebuilds at this point in that kind of condition. But that renovation is going to include improvements to the hotel, improvements to the pool area, maintaining a lot of performances and maintaining the theme weeks that have been really important to Provincetown for the last many years.
GG I thought it was interesting what he had said in the interview about employee housing. Could you expand on that a little bit?
PB Absolutely. So, in addition to being a really important venue, the Crown & Anchor owns 27 bedrooms of employee housing, which makes it one of the largest landlords in town. So, we did some reporting around those tenants who are going to be moving out in January. The prior owners are going to put them up in hotel rooms through April. There's not a lot of housing available in Provincetown, even in winter, so that was an important consideration. And then Tristan said that he already owns employee housing in Fire Island. He talked about the shabby condition it was in when he got it and that that bothered him and that he's spent money renovating it up to standards that he thought were appropriate for people who work six days a week—standards that, he said, needed to be high, they needed to include good bedding, good lighting, televisions and the kind of amenities that people who work hard, he said, ought to be provided. So, there is going to be a renovation of the staff housing units in Provincetown. It'll take place over this winter and then presumably be open for employees to move into when the Crown & Anchor reopens, probably in the month of May.
