Who

Chang is the founder of the McSam Hotel Group, which is constructing dinky, unimpressive hotels almost as quickly as tourists are filling them up.

Backstory

Some hoteliers take their time with projects, careful to ensure that each one makes a big splash. Not the shockingly prolific Sam Chang, who has constructed dozens of hotels over the past few years. Born in Taiwan, Chang came to the US as a kid and dropped out of high school to help his parents manage a hotel in Los Angeles. He jumped into the hotel business himself when he was living in Baltimore, having successfully operated a string of Chinese restaurants in the area. Some 13 years after establishing his beachhead in Baltimore, Chang decided to move into the New York market in 1997. His first acquisition: a small plot—just 25 feet wide by 13 feet long—on the northern edge of Chelsea, which Chang used to construct a pencil-thin, 15-story Comfort Inn.

Of note

Today, Chang's company grosses more then $400 million a year and he's become a major force in the hotel industry. Not that you've necessarily heard of him: the secretive Chang relies on existing franchises like Hilton, Sheraton, Candlewood Suites, and Holiday Inn and rarely courts the press, relying on a steady stream of non-descript tourists to fill up his hotels. But as big as Chang's empire is, he remains in expansion mode. Former New York tourism chief Christyne Nicholas estimated back in 2006 that out of the 5,000 rooms under construction in the city, 3,000 will fall under the auspices of McSam group. Chang has said his goal is to build 50 hotels in Manhattan, after which he plans to retire. At the rate he's going, he might want to start planning that retirement party.

Drama

Chang's use of nonunion labor has upset rival developers, union leaders and the larger construction companies in town. Much of Chang's construction work is done though Tritel Construction, a company that Chang controls, and he relies on immigrants who are paid less than half that of unionized construction workers. Friction with the construction union has led to a few scuffles on job sites and may eventually land Chang in court—the authorities have been investigating the case. He's also had a longstanding feud with rival hotel developer John Lam, a former business partner. The two had a falling out in 2005 and eventually ended their partnership, but they've since taken the matter to court.