The New Hamptons?

Cape Advisors has also bought eight acres south of the Chelsea that are slated to be the site of a yet-unnamed casino project they’re developing, though Bashaw admits the current economy isn’t exactly encouraging. “We’ve got a weird situation out there right now with the credit markets, so we’re watching that and planning,” he says. He’s not at all worried about the Chelsea, though, and swears he’s not concerned that families will steer clear for fear of exposing their kids to pawnshops and prostitutes at a tender age. He’s sure they’ll be too busy playing on the beach to look west toward the scary stuff. (This may be his only sketchy theory, though teenagers do actually think it’s cool to go to sin-tastic Atlantic City.)

So far, Bashaw’s biggest skeptics are at the New York Times Styles section, which over the winter wrote about the Chelsea, pooh-poohing the idea of any self-respecting Manhattanite ever willingly going to Atlantic City. The gist was — why would anyone ever not go to the Hamptons? “I have a lot of friends in the Hamptons with houses, and I go out there,” Bashaw notes. “The Hamptons are great and they’re groovy, but they’re so social-climbing, it can be exhausting in its own way.”

If Curtis and Colleen Bashaw can love the Shore and even believe in its bastard, prodigal, pawnshop-filled Atlantic City, well, maybe it’s worthy of our love as well. Think of the Bashaws as stylish shrinks, here to make over the Shore’s tattered self-esteem. And if it takes $110 million and Stephen Starr to help them do it, darn it, they’re going to make Atlantic City a place where you can go and not want to kill yourself when you wake up the next morning.

“THIS WILL HAVE two bedrooms, a living room, a fireplace and a balcony,” explains Bashaw, standing in a gutted future Chelsea Luxe penthouse on the 21st floor of the Holiday Inn tower that will rent for $1,710 for two nights. It has killer views of the Atlantic. A few floors down, a model Luxe room looks perfect, but when Bashaw and his sister begin examining the mini-bar and built-in drawers above it, they both frown. Colleen says the drawers won’t “fit a sweater,” and since she and her 30-something, cool-mom peers are exactly the type of cashmere-toting guests who’ll be staying here, her concern is taken seriously — which means new millwork for each guest room. Steve Talbott, one of the money guys who’s trailing behind, looks alarmed, since the millwork is already under way in Mexico: “Steve is in charge of the schedule, so he hates it when Colleen gets a better idea,” Bashaw jokes.