Money is flowing from both sides as the hotel union maneuvers to thwart the plan of the Plaza Hotel’s owners to close the Midtown landmark at month’s end and convert it into luxury condominiums.

The New York Hotel Trades Council, according to a source, has spent a total of $2 million on television spots, full-page newspaper ads, and rallies featuring a civil-rights campaigner, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and a movie director, Peter Bogdanovich.

Elad Properties, meanwhile, is spending more than $20,000 a month for two public relations firms, a lobbying group, and a well-connected former city official.

A relatively unknown developer until it charged onto the New York real estate scene last summer with the $675 million purchase of the Plaza, Elad plans to shutter the 805-room hotel April 30, resulting in the loss of 800 union jobs.The Plaza is scheduled to reopen late next year with 200 condominiums, a scaleddown,150-room hotel, and a retail space on the ground floor.

“With big public fights like the West Side and the Plaza, this is now the way in which things are decided in the public realm: We buy hired guns to craft our message,” the executive director of the nonprofit think tank the Citizens Union, Dick Dadey, said. “What is very important is that the public know the source of these funds, where they come from, and what they are being used for.”

A public relations executive, Lloyd Kaplan of Linden Alschuler & Kaplan, is the newest member of the Elad publicity machine, joining another spokesman, Steve Solomon of Rubenstein Public Relations.

Sources familiar with the fee structures of the two firms said the minimum monthly charge for for-profit clients is between $5,000 and $10,000. Mr. Kaplan said that description of the firm’s fee scale was inaccurate, but he declined to elaborate. Mr. Solomon did not return calls by press time.

“Linden Alschuler is heading up everything to do with the condominium conversion, while Rubenstein will represent Elad the company, the same way it always has,” Mr. Kaplan said.

Elad also has retained the lobbyist Suri Kasirer, whose husband, Bruce Teitelbaum, is former chief of staff to Mayor Giuliani. Ms. Kasirer, head of Kasirer Consulting, is being paid $14,500 a month from March through May, and then $10,700 a month from June through March 2006, according to state lobbying records. Mr. Teitelbaum, too, has represented Elad: Following a rally last month by the hotel workers’ union, he served as Elad’s spokesman.

The union hired the Sunshine Group, headed by Kenneth Sunshine, to do its public relations, and the Advance Group, headed by Scott Levenson, to do its lobbying. Both Mr. Sunshine and Mr. Levenson work for several other unions, including the powerful healthcare workers union, 1199 SEIU.

It could not be determined yesterday what the Sunshine Group’s fees were. The Advance Group, which has been retained by the hotel workers’ union since 1999, is paid a monthly fee of $4,500.

“This is a crusade about saving union jobs, not about money, so I’m not upset we are not being paid more,” Ken Frydman, who was subcontracted by the Advance Group to help fight the hotel’s closure, said.

The $2 million spent by the union comes mostly from an extra $10 a week that all the New York hotel union members are paying, according to a source familiar with the union expenditures, who spoke on condition that he would not be named. The source said the union has $20 million in its “defense fund.”

Much of the money in the Plaza campaign goes to costly TV spots, another source who demanded anonymity said. This week, for example, the union paid for two advertisements during a Yankees game.

The union also spent a reported $20,000 on a trip to Israel to seek to convince Elad Properties’ parent company, Elad Group, to halt its conversion plans of the hotel.

In addition to the closure of the Plaza, the two sides are battling over a bill introduced in the City Council that would limit to 20% the share of hotel rooms in any hotel that could be converted into condominiums. The bill, introduced by a Queens Democrat, Joseph Addabbo, would require that the Plaza retain more than four times the number of hotel rooms it plans to reopen with. The measure has still not gone to committee, where it will be decided whether it falls within the council’s jurisdiction, Mr. Addabbo said.

In addition, the council member said, he floated the idea of a mixed-use unit – a unit that a developer could sell as a condominium but would revert back to use as a hotel room for part of the year. Mr. Addabbo said the hotel union had agreed to the plan, but “Elad said no.” He added: “In my mind, that is no way to negotiate.”