The New Hamptons?

When it opens this summer, The Chelsea will be Atlantic City’s first hip, stylish non-casino hotel. But can developer Curtis Bashaw really turn A.C. into…

Bashaw’s serene confidence is inspiring, but you can’t help thinking as the group discusses kitchen grease disposal: It’s one thing to transform Cape May — but to bring a J. Crew-ish, ­happy, colorful vibe to Atlantic City? The very fact that Bashaw and Wood are acknowledging the existence of the Atlantic Ocean here is remarkable. Even more astonishing is that Bashaw believes Atlantic City can be stylish, rather than merely louche and kind of pervy. That it can be cool. That the Chelsea can be the refreshing crab cocktail to the Borgata’s five-pound lobster, the Kate Spade to the Borgata’s Versace. That it can be more intrinsically hip and offer something more wholesome and real than the delightfully Gucci-and-cleavage-filled Bobby Flay and Wolfgang Puck restaurants, which we love, but where we cringe when we see people toting their babies to dinner.

And so this handsome man, who even on a construction site in Atlantic City looks like he just walked in from the Via della Spiga in Milan, is expressing his love for the Jersey Shore and his belief that it can be something better. “I’m loyal to the home team and think this market deserves hospitality projects that are beautiful and stylish,” he says, and to that end, he’s investing more than $100 million in the Chelsea.

Now, if we can only believe in it, too.

IN LATE FEBRUARY, Bashaw and his interior-designer sister Colleen Bashaw, who’s decorating the Chelsea and who dreamed up Congress Hall’s chic pastels-and-stripes-and-zebra look, get onto the dusty old Holiday Inn elevator at the Chelsea, trailed by their project supervisor, Curtis Sachs. Bashaw’s bearing is so self-possessed that the union guys laying pipe practically salute him; Colleen, meanwhile, who’s just had a baby a few weeks before, resembles a more willowy Gwyneth Paltrow. (The Bashaws grew up in Haddonfield, but their aura is pure Manhattan.) Sachs, who looks about 15, is clutching a dozen “punch lists,” or to-do lists that are updated weekly for the project, and is blessed with a calm temperament that works well with Bashaw’s quick-paced style.

The Chelsea was a glint in Bashaw’s eye almost as soon as Congress Hall opened up. The Jersey Shore was clearly starved for style doled out via casual-yet-grand, beachy hotel experiences that suited both families and couples looking for a quick retreat. If Bashaw and Wood could do it in Cape May — well, where else? Bashaw and his four siblings had grown up spending time in Cape May visiting his grandfather, a preacher who once held revival camps at Congress Hall, but they’d also spent time as kids in Atlantic City. “We grew up visiting my grandmother’s summer house in Atlantic City,” recalls Bashaw, who remembers the old, pre-casino hotels there. When Bashaw got the CRDA gig, he couldn’t stop thinking about reviving a casino-free, sun-soaked experience in suddenly slightly less scary, more accessible A.C. Atlantic City was even closer to Philly and New York than Cape May, and was due to get a rail line from Manhattan in mid-2008.