NYC Celebrities Real Estate

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I am going to create a post where celebreties in NYC live, are moving in or moving out. Just for fun.

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GIMME SHELTER

By BRADEN KEIL
June 5, 2004


Pretty Pricey

Julian Roberts, now a preggy woman with twins, is suddenly in need of larger quarters.

Not one to waste time - except perhaps on her previous marriage to Lyle Lovett - she's just put her renovated 3,000- square-foot Greenwich Village prewar apartment on the market for just under $5 million. The Edwardianstyle digs (with original rare woodwork) have three bedrooms, one with a bedrom-size sitting room, three bathrooms, a library, formal dining room, maid's room and large gourmet kitchen.

The willowy 36- year-old actress, now married to cameraman Danny Moder, bought the nine-room co-op apartment on a high floor overlooking lower Fifth Avenue in 1999 for $2.95 million after leaving Gramercy Park. It was in Greenwich Village where Roberts first lived in New York, after leaving her small-town Georgia home as an aspiring 17-year-old thespian. She and her husband have decided to raise their two children as New Yorkers. Where they go next in the city is anyone's guess. Her high-profile neighbors, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah Jessica Parker, seem to be fine raising their kids in Greenwich Village. Roberts already owns several condominium apartments in Gramercy Park, and may choose to return to the leafy neighborhood, where she already has a coveted key to the kid-friendly private park.


Once in a lifetime

JUST a short walk from Julia's place, Talking Heads founder David Byrne is talking dollars, $5.9 million to be exact, for his West 12th Street townhouse. Byrne bought the five-story 1850s antique structure with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, two half-baths and an elevator in 1990 - a year before his band broke up - for $1.25 million. The 6,000-squarefoot residence includes a large, private artist's studio with doubleheight ceilings - where the art-school dropout dabbles on canvas and in other mediums. There's also a south-facing planted garden and five fireplaces. The listing is being handled by Rise Cale, Jan Hashey and Leslie Mason of Douglas Elliman..


Don't cry for him

LORD LLOYD WEBBER of Sydmonton, otherwise known as composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, is selling one of his three Trump Tower residences. The musical genius behind the "Phantom of the Opera," "Cats" and "Evita" is listing a two-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath condo that he extensively renovated last year for $1.995 million. eedless to say, those renovations included a top-of-theline music system. Webber bought the 44th-floor pad in 2000 under his knighted name for $1.1 million. The place was acquired to house his overflow guests, which included two of his adult-age children from the first of his three marriages.

His main residence is a combined duplex of 5,000 square feet that he bought on the upper floors of the 68-story building for $10 million in 1987, according to public records.Listing broker is Dolly Lenz of Douglas Elliman


Bruce's bargain

SPEAKING of Trump Tower, the price of Bruce Willis' 15-room duplex a few floors above Webber's condo has been lowered by $3 million. The six-bedroom, six-bath and two halfbath apartment with a dramatic 60-footlong living room with ouble-height ceilings in two combined apartments, is now going for $16.995 million, after the "Die Hard" star first put it on the market last September for $19.995 million.

Willis bought the formerly separate apartments, totaling 6,700 square feet, in November 2000 for $10.5 million, after he separated from his (fellow) cradlerobbing ex-wife Demi Moore.


Nanny's quarters

HERE'S a sitcom waiting to happen Fran Drescher, a.k.a. the whiny, nasally challenged Nanny, could buy the apartment next to the equally exasperating Material middleager, Madonna. According to our impeccable sources, Drescher is in the running for a parkfronting co-op apartment belonging to businessman John Louise at 41 Central Park West, with a $4.5 million price tag. Louise, whom we spoke with from his Sag Harbor residence, couldn't remember the size of his place nor his asking price, but was miraculously able to recall that two people were bidding for his place. The prewar pad includes two bedrooms, two baths, a wood-burning fireplace and French doors leading to a large balcony. Madonna, 45, thankfully spends most of her time in England with her British hubby, Guy Ritchie, and her kids. Apparently, she's working in earnest there to lose her Midwestern twang.


Weather eye

WCBS weatherdude John Bolaris has recently found himself in a family way, so he's giving up his duplex penthouse apartment in SoHo for more a childfriendly environment. "It's an unbelieveable bachelor pad," says his broker Adam Modlin, of The Modlin Group. "When I sold it to him last year, it was perfect. Now he's in a family-type mode." Indeed, the 1,300 square-foot place, with a $1.975 asking, is quite shag-a-delic for the single individual. It sports high ceilings with wood beams, a double-size bedroom, and two baths. In addition, there's a chef's kitchen with all the upscale appliances, and a 600-square-foot deck with great views. And one other thing that Bolaris probably wasn't aware of before he bought: a birdseye view of Meg Ryan's penthouse across the street!


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings

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GIMME SHELTER

By BRADEN KEIL
June 12, 2004


Woody's new nest

WOODY ALLEN is taking the lease and running. Since selling his oversized - and some think overpriced - Carnegie Hill mansion to retired Goldman Sachs exec Barry Volpert for about $25 million a few months ago, he's signed a lease to take another townhouse a few blocks away.

Sources say the Woodman will pay approximately $25,000 a month for a year's lease on a four-story place with four bedrooms, five bathrooms and a garden in the high 80s, between Park and Madison. Allen's also been scouring the Upper East Side for a relatively smaller single-family residence one where he and wife Soon-Yi can add their personal touches: He would like a room where he can play his music; she'd like a sound-proof refuge on the other side of the house. In the running is a six-level place of 11,000 square feet (remember, we said relatively smaller than his former digs of some 18,000 square feet) on East 70th Street, with a $15 million price tag. The 28-foot-wide building, which presently houses the headquarters of The Century Foundation, was built for Walter Rothschild - a founder of Federated Department Stores - in 1929. The light-filled structure includes original details, high ceilings, two large gardens and a curved main staircase.


Twins are in

ATTENTION teenage boys and dirty old men!

The Olsen twins. have begun moving into their New York apartment building. The nubile NYU freshmen, who are expected to be worth a cool billion by the time they graduate, have shooed their teams of decorators away and are now carting in their favorite dolls and other play toys in advance of the coming school year. Last November, the tantalizing teens, otherwise known as Mary-Kate and Ashley, purchased two apartments - a one-bedroom and a three-bedroom - in the new Morton Square development along the river on the West Side for $3.5 million. They then combined them into one big double-mint dollhouse. It's not known where the inseparable thespians, who become legal, er, turn 18 tomorrow, will house their beefy bodyguards, who've already gotten tossed from a Manhattan eatery for getting rough with the owner.


Design within reach

FASHION designer Cynthia Rowley is selling her fashionable TriBeCa loft for $2.5 million. It's not that she wants to go. She just needs more than its 2,800 square feet for her growing family. The three-bedroom, two-bath condo has 12-foot ceilings, a wood-burning fireplace and a kitchen with all the top appliances. There's a digital temperaturecontrolled steam shower, a Jacuzzi and French doors leading to a very large outdoor deck. "It has one of the biggest terraces in the downtown area," said Halstead Property broker Eugene Cordano, who's handling the listing. There actually are two outdoor spaces. The first is in front of the loft, just off the living room that faces west. The other is a huge sun deck in the rear of the residence that's adjacent to the master bedroom. According to records, Rowley and her architect-artist husband bought the loft in 1999 for $1.2 million. They then added their own upgrades.


Museum quality

THE director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art has a work of art he wants to sell you. Philippe de Montebello is selling his nine-room Fifth Avenue co-op in Carnegie Hill for $5.9 million. The elegant three-bedroom, three-bath prewar co-op apartment, with Central Park views, has a large living room with stately herringbone floors and a woodburning fireplace; a library with built-in bookcases and window seats; a formal dining room; a large eat-in kitchen with pantry and two maid's rooms with baths. De Montebello, a native of France who's smoothly helmed the museum for the past 27 years, has overseen such notable exhibits at the Met from King Tut to, most recently, El Greco. Sources say de Montebello, who could not be reached for comment, has found another apartment on Fifth Avenue that's closer to the museum. Listing brokers are Suzanne Sealy and Dolly Lenz of Douglas Elliman.


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

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GIMME SHELTER


By BRADEN KEIL
June 19, 2004


Janet's flash pad

What have you done for yourself lately, Janet Jackson? According to our records, you've become a neighbor of Harrison Ford and his skeletal gal-pal, Calista Flockhart, in Chelsea.

Jackson's luxurious digs, which are perched just below Ford's penthouse condo, are located in a former office building just off Seventh Avenue. The place had been sporting a price tag of $6.8 million before Janet signed on the dotted line.

The loft-like flat has high ceilings, four bedrooms, 41/2 baths and views in three directions.

The pop (or, is that pop-out?) princess had been renting a three-bedroom apartment in Trump International Hotel & Tower for nearly four years for some $40,000 a month.


They say it's good to be a producer

Speaking of Trump International, husband-and-wife Broadway producers Fran and Barry Weissler are selling their two-bedroom apartment on one of the building's higher floors for $7.495 million.

The Weisslers, whose hits have included "Chicago" and "Annie Get Your Gun," bought the five-room condo in 1997 for a hair under $2 million. Besides its park and river views, eat-in kitchen and 11-foot ceilings, it's got room service from Jean-Georges.

Their broker, Dolly Lenz of Douglas Elliman, naturally had no comment.

Fortunately for Fran and Barry, the moving truck won't have to go far. The couple have closed on another two-bedroom apartment, on yet an even higher floor, across the street at the Time Warner Center - for which they paid $2.7 million in 2002.

Joining them in the new complex are husband-and-wife Hollywood producers Anne and Arnold Kopelson, who have already sold their apartment in Trump's building, after signing a contract two years ago to take two units on a high floor for $8.45 million at Time Warner.


Anna's ambitions

While we're on the subject of the Time Warner Center, it should be noted that the youngest resident could be 19-year-old Russian heiress Anna Anisimova, who is about to go to contract on a $15 million, 4,000-square-foot apartment in the South Tower, located one floor below the now-famous $42.5 million duplex purchased by financier David Martinez last fall.

She tells us her decorator has already been in the new pad several times with swatches in hand.

As we first reported, Anisimova - who paid $550,000 to socialite Denise Rich for the use of her Southampton home for three months - recently signed a contract to buy fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg's studio/residence in the Meatpacking District, including the air rights above it, for approximately $23 million.

Anisimova, who transacted the von Furstenberg deal for her family's international real estate company, is planning to develop the property into luxury condo units, should she get through all the red tape.


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

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BIG DEAL


By WILLIAM NEUMAN
June 19, 2004


Lutèce's Founder Moves On, Gets a New Home Kitchen


After 40 years of living in a small apartment above his seminal French restaurant, Lutèce, the chef André Soltner is moving uptown.

Mr. Soltner and his wife, Simone, continued to live in the fourth-floor walkup over the restaurant at 249 East 50th Street even after they sold the business to Ark Restaurants in 1994. But when Ark decided to close the legendary restaurant for good last February, the Soltners realized it was time to move on.

With the help of the Corcoran Group broker Mary Fortuna, whose husband, Tony, once worked as Mr. Soltner's restaurant manager, they found a 1,400-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment with a 275-square-foot terrace in a co-op building at 500 East 83rd Street.

They have signed a contract to buy it for $870,000 and expect to close later this month.

Mr. Soltner, an energetic 71, has also put the four-story town house on East 50th Street, which was both his home and the home of Lutèce throughout its storied run, on the market, with an asking price of $4 million. Measuring more than 4,700 square feet, it comes complete with kitchen equipment, a zinc bar imported from Paris, and loads of memories.

Robert A. Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, said there has been keen interest from restaurateurs, as well as foreign governments interested in using the building as a consulate.

Now Mr. Soltner gets a new apartment and a new kitchen. "There is a nice four-burner stove, an oven," he said, sitting last week on a moss green velvet banquette in the cool shadows of an emptied out Lutèce. "There is, how you say. . . ." Mr. Soltner, who has a French accent, searched for a word. "The first time in my life I will have that, you know, where you put in fast. . . ." He waved his hand, laughed, and snatched the word out of the air: "A microwave oven! I never had one. I don't know how it works."

Mr. Soltner, who teaches at the French Culinary Institute in SoHo and serves as a guest chef on cruise ships several times a year, was remarkably casual about his new kitchen. He didn't even look to see what brand the range is.

"It looked nice to me," he said. "It's gas. I don't need a professional stove." His home kitchen for much of the last four decades has been a tiny, windowless Pullman affair with a well-worn range and just enough room to open the refrigerator. A two-slot toaster and a Mr. Coffee share the counter. No Cuisinart. No gleaming pans.

"The fancy stuff, that's for amateur chefs," he said. "They need gadgets. I have 50 or 60 knives and I use just one." The couple have a large, well-stocked kitchen in their country home at Hunter Mountain, in the Catskills. That, he said, is where he entertains.

Now the Soltners are packing. They hope to move next month. "I will have maybe a little prick in my heart the day I leave," Mr. Soltner said, "but that's life."


Home for Celebrities

The lemminglike migration of celebrities to the western edge of Manhattan island shows no sign of letting up. The actress Meryl Streep agreed last month to buy the $9.95 million, 3,944-square-foot penthouse in a new condominium building going up at West and Laight Streets in TriBeCa, according to a person close to the development.

The actress will be able to move into the four-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath apartment with Brazilian walnut plank floors when the building is finished next year.

The penthouse has glass walls on three sides, facing a 2,231-square-foot wraparound terrace. The 13-story building and an adjoining converted warehouse have been named River Lofts by the developer Shaya Boymelgreen. The Sunshine Group is marketing the apartments.

Ugly, noisy, traffic-clogged West Street continues to be a celebrity magnet, with River Lofts now extending the boldfaced-name zone south from the architect Richard Meier's star-studded Perry Street and Charles Street condos in the far West Village.

After going into contract on the River Lofts penthouse, Ms. Streep put her Greenwich Village town house at 19 West 12th Street up for sale for $12 million.


A Beautiful Second Home

Fame, like nature, abhors a vacuum. The same West 12th Street block that Meryl Streep is abandoning has just become home to the Hollywood agent Bryan Lourd. Mr. Lourd, a managing partner at the Creative Artists Agency, plunked down $4.9 million for a one-bedroom penthouse condominium at 59 West 12th Street in early April. The duplex apartment is small for the price — about 2,000 square feet — but it comes with 850 square feet of outdoor space and 14th-floor views of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. The upper level has the living room, a terrace and "views of the world," said John Venekamp, the broker with Brown Harris Stevens who handled the sale.

In his new digs, Mr. Lourd, whom Esquire magazine recently called the ninth-best-dressed man in America, is just a short walk from the 22 Bank Street town house owned by his friend, Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. Last month, Mr. Lourd was sucked into the squall swirling around Mr. Carter, when it was revealed the editor received a $100,000 consultant fee from Universal Studios for recommending the book "A Beautiful Mind" be turned into a movie. The payment raised eyebrows because Mr. Carter appears at times to have crossed the line between entertainment industry journalist and Hollywood insider. The Los Angeles Times reported that Mr. Lourd was the go-between, who on Mr. Carter's behalf, put the 100-K bite on Brian Grazer, the movie's co-producer.

Mr. Lourd, who represents Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Madonna, among others, declined to speak about either l'affaire Carter or his new apartment. "It's not going to be his primary residence," said Wendy Smith, the director of communications for the Creative Artists Agency.

Mr. Lourd, who is divorced from the actress Carrie Fisher, will be keeping his Los Angeles home, a 6,000-square-foot Holmby Hills house by Wallace Neff, the legendary architect who designed many early Hollywood mansions.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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BIG DEAL


By WILLIAM NEUMAN
June 20, 2004

A Notorious Manhattan Address Changes Hands Once Again

The Upper East Side town house once owned by Irene Silverman, who was murdered nearly six years ago, was sold last week for $10 million to a group of investors who plan to renovate it and resell it as two luxury triplexes.

Ms. Silverman, 82, disappeared from her limestone town house at 20 East 65th Street in July 1998. Her body was never found, but in May 2000, a Manhattan jury convicted Sante and Kenneth Kimes, a mother-son grifter team, of murdering her as part of a scheme to steal the valuable six-story residence, which is half a block from Central Park.

The town house had languished on the market until September 2002, when Ms. Silverman's estate sold it to David Marvisi, a Manhattan nightclub owner, for $7.5 million, half its original $15 million asking price.

Mr. Marvisi began but never finished renovations.

Last Tuesday, he said, he sold the property to a group of investors led by the Dominion Group. Dominion, which has been on a spending spree in recent months, is controlled by Milton S. Rinzler and his sons Bradley T. Rinzler and James K. Rinzler.

Richard Steinberg, managing director of Warburg Realty Partnership, said the new owners plan to turn the building into two triplexes that will be marketed for about $10 million each.

The contractor, Gino Capolino, was already at work last week restoring the town house, where much of the building's valuable detail had been stripped.

Decorative moldings on the lower floors and a pair of hand-carved wooden doors remain.

According to city records, other town houses bought within the last year by the Rinzlers, or investors associated with them, include: 12 East 73rd Street, for $6.8 million; 18 East 68th Street, for $7.6 million; and 39 East 74th Street, for $6.7 million.

Even as the sale for Ms. Silverman's town house closed, Ms. Kimes faced another murder charge in a trial in Los Angeles.

Opening statements began last Monday.

This time her son will testify against her. He has admitted shooting the victim, a man named David Kazdin, in 1998, several months before the Silverman killing.


Fighting An Eviction

Real estate dominoes are tumbling on the Upper East Side in a tragicomic chain reaction of eviction proceedings that has pitted a wealthy couple against one of the city's most successful developers.

The only-in-New-York sequence of events began last December, when a woman named Sharon Goldman paid $8.2 million for a six-story town house at 12 East 68th Street, the culmination of a three-year house hunt.

The town house had a tenant, the developer Aby J. Rosen, whose RFR Realty controls such iconic Manhattan skyscrapers as the Seagram Building and Lever House., Mr. Rosen had rented three floors of the town house for several years, at $22,050 a month, but his lease was due to expire in April.

After closing on their dream house, Mrs. Goldman and her husband, Richard, the president of Frederick Goldman, a jewelry manufacturer and marketer, then gave notice at their apartment building at 74 East 79th Street, saying they planned to leave their rented, $15,000-a-month triplex by May 15. The owner of the 79th Street building in turn found a new tenant for the luxury triplex, signing the tenant to a lease that began June 15.

But things became very complicated this spring.

Mr. Rosen had been planning to move into another town house he was renovating at 5 East 80th Street. (He said the building was once rented by Imelda Marcos.)

But the renovation was going slower than expected, and he says he made it clear that he planned to exercise an option in his East 68th Street lease that let him remain there on a month-to-month basis for up to five months, or as long as September.

The Goldmans, however, wanted him out, and as the expiration date for their own lease approached last month they started an eviction proceeding against the developer. The legal action against Mr. Rosen was first reported in The New York Post.

The Goldmans' landlord then followed suit and began legal proceedings aimed at forcing them out.

Last week, Michelle D. Schreiber, a housing court judge, tossed out the case against Mr. Rosen, saying the Goldmans had not given him the required 30 days notice.

Mr. Rosen now says he has no plans to move until at least August, when he expects his new home to be ready. "I'm a landlord, I own a lot of apartments," he said. "I know how to write leases for myself."

The Goldmans' lawyer, Warren A. Estis, said he would begin a new proceeding against Mr. Rosen immediately. "I believe that with his vast holdings he does have other alternatives," Mr. Estis said.

A Mystery No More

William S. Taubman, the shopping-center scion, is the mystery buyer who has gone into contract on the $12.5 million Gracie Square duplex that was the former home of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, according to records filed with the city.

A bank document filed with the Finance Department on May 12 indicates that Mr. Taubman, 45, and his wife, Ellen N. Taubman, an expert in Native American art, have agreed to buy the opulent, 18-room spread at 10 Gracie Square.

Mr. Taubman's father, A. Alfred Taubman, the former chairman of Sotheby's, was convicted by a federal jury in December 2001 of taking part in a scheme to fix prices on the sale of works of art. He spent nearly seven and a half months in prison.

The younger Mr. Taubman, who recently interviewed with the co-op board, is a director and executive vice president of the other family business, Taubman Centers, a real estate investment trust, begun by his father, that owns and manages shopping centers.

Mr. Taubman declined to discuss his bid to purchase Madame Chiang's seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom apartment.

The New York Observer reported last month that a mystery buyer had agreed to pay close to the apartment's $12.5 million asking price. The document filed with the city did not reveal the purchase price.

Madame Chiang, the widow of the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, came to New York from Taiwan after her husband's death in 1975 and settled at 10 Gracie Square. She died last October at age 105.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Gotham Real Estate


June 21, 2004

Angelina Flips!

After less than a year, Jolie is moving on.

Last fall, Angelina Jolie managed—freaky lifestyle rumors and all—to get by the co-op board at 55 Central Park West. (You recognize the building from Ghostbusters; Madonna lives there, too.) On June 2, Jolie listed her two-bedroom for $2.7 million with Stribling broker Pamela D’Arc, who declined to comment on the deal. Previous boldface residents have included Calvin Klein, David Geffen, and Donna Karan.


CALL THE PIANO MOVERS:

Cabaret master Michael Feinstein, co-owner of Feinstein’s at the Regency, and his partner, Terrence Flannery , have bought a $3.075 million townhouse on East 63rd Street through Corcoran broker Carrie Chiang. The slender four-story house has a library, but that’s not the main draw. “The music room in particular has a feeling of comfort and warmth,” says Feinstein. “It is not ‘a room with a view’—the less distractions, the better.” —D.S.

Copyright © 2002, New York Metro

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GIMME SHELTER


By BRADEN KEIL
June 26, 2004


Hungry & homeless

The Olsen twins are losing more than just pounds: Now they're minus a few thousand square feet.

Just when Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were hoping to move into their new condo at Morton Square in the Village came the word that the apartment - actually two combined into one $3.5 million spread - won't be ready when the school bell rings at NYU for the fall term.

Prior to Mary-Kate going into rehab, she and Ashley - and their manager/father - signed a lease to take a 3,500-square-foot co-op at 133 Wooster for $14,000 a month.

But the owner of the three-bedroom spread, Amy Hunter, had a change of heart and put the kibosh on the deal.

"They were supposed to move in this week, and [Hunter] basically told them that she thought they weren't going to get through the board," said our inside source. "Maybe she confused them with the Hilton sisters."

Hunter could not be reached, while the Olsens' hunt continues. Andy Stenzler - the former managing partner of just-acquired-by-Corcoran SoLOFTS, which represented the twins - had no comment.


News and views

NBC Nightly News heir apparent Brian Williams is wasting no time preparing to take the helm as the network's prime-time talking news head.

The 44-year-old, who will succeed Tom Brokaw in December, has inked a deal to take a 2,300-square-foot pad as a part-time residence at One Beacon Court - now under construction on East 58th Street. Williams, 44, a married father of two, has gone to contract on one of the building's high floors for under $4 million.

The apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows will have at least three bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths, and have views of Central Park, with a glimpse of NBC's home at Rockefeller Center.


They got Sunshine

In other One Beacon Court news, condo marketing guru Louise Sunshine is following Williams' (and Beyonce's) lead and buying a place there.

Sunshine, who heads the Sunshine Group - representing the residences at the Time Warner Center, 176-173 Perry St. and the newest Richard Meier-designed building at 165 Charles St. - is about to go to contract, she said.

While she wouldn't discuss details, our sources say she took a 2,000-square-foot pied-a-terre in the $3 million range.

So what's wrong with the other projects in her Manhattan portfolio?

"Absolutely nothing," she said. "This just happens to be within walking distance of my office."


Mold gold

The mold saga at 515 Park Ave. has finally dried up - and, more importantly, apartments are starting to sell again.

The 4,400-square-foot duplex belonging to former Bankers Trust CEO Frank Newman is now in contract for $16.1 million, or $3,650 per foot, while investor Charles Brandes of San Diego is selling his place for a rumored $11,000,000.

"What a difference a year makes," sighed one relieved resident. "Everyone is kissy-kissy now."


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

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BIG DEAL


A Big Sale, and Back Rent

David Marvisi, a Manhattan nightclub owner, has been busy. Two weeks ago he sold, for $10 million, the East 65th Street town house once owned by Irene Silverman, the woman who was murdered by Sante and Kenneth Kimes.

A month earlier, he sold a four-story building at 668 Avenue of the Americas, near 21st Street, for $2.38 million, which he said he originally acquired in exchange for his stake in the Limelight nightclub.

Now, Joel Bernstein, a Manhattan lawyer, wants to get in on the action.

Mr. Bernstein took Mr. Marvisi to court in April 2001 for walking out on four months of rent for a loft apartment in Lower Manhattan at 77 Warren Street. The building is owned and managed by companies tied to the Gindi family, which is best known for running the Century 21 department store. A civil court judge ruled in favor of the landlord last July. But Mr. Bernstein said his client has yet to be paid the $75,368 in rent, fees, interest and legal costs awarded by the court.

Mr. Marvisi said he was unaware that a judgment had been entered. In a deposition, Mr. Marvisi had said the building was still being renovated when he moved in more than four years ago, paying $6,500 a month.

"The place was not in a condition to live," he said. "I had a name for it, Living Hell."

He said he got stuck in the elevator at least three times, on one occasion for more than two hours. "We were lucky we didn't die," he said in the deposition. Mr. Marvisi also said there were problems with heat and air-conditioning and that water from an overflowing washing machine stained his all-white furniture. The landlord testified that he had quickly fixed all of the problems.

Mr. Marvisi, who drives an orange Bentley and owns the Exit nightclub, testified he lived in the Warren Street loft for 14 months while renovating a duplex condo he owns in the Regatta Building in Battery Park City. He said he is selling his New York property because he is moving to Miami.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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GIMME SHELTER


By BRADEN KEIL
July 3, 2004

A Beacon For Welch

Jack Welch wasn't particularly thrilled when he had to give up his pricey condo in Trump International Hotel & Tower during a nasty divorce from his now ex-wife, Jane Beasley. As the rancorous divorce dragged on in 2002 - brought on by the former General Electric chairman's affair with Harvard Business Review editor Suzy Wetlaufer - the details of Welch's $9 million compensation package were presented in court documents released during the proceedings.

Welch's generous pension, in addition to the condo at Trump International, included the unrestricted use of G.E. corporate jets, box seats at Knicks and Yankees games, and country club memberships.

Feeling the pressure from stockholders, Welch opted to forego many perks. He not only gave up the 3,600-square-foot condo in the building fronting the park at Columbus Circle that was owned by G.E. - then valued at $11.25 million - he was actually forced to buy the place for his ex-wife as part of the divorce settlement, for roughly the going rate.

Beasley eventually walked away with nearly half his net worth, valued at approximately $500 million.

Fortunately for Neutron Jack, now a spry 70, he recently wed Ms. Wetlaufer and has just signed a contract to take another spiffy condo, this time at the new One Beacon Court building at 151 E. 58th St. According to sources, Welch has just bought a $5.5 million 3,600-square-foot pad on one of the higher floors in the 55-story building. Welch will join anointed NBC anchor Brian Williams and pop star Beyonce Knowles in the ritzy building, which is still under construction.

Welch's broker, Deborah Grubman of the Corcoran Group, could not be reached for comment.


Expert bids

Going, going, gone to the man holding the gavel. Sotheby's auctioneer, Tobias Mayer, is the top bidder for a new apartment in the Time Warner Center.

If you've never heard of Mayer (and few have outside the rarefied art industry), he's considered to be the auction world's equivalent of home-run slugger Barry Bonds. But rather than swing a bat, he bangs a mean gavel.

He's the only one of his profession who's brought in over $100 million on one piece of art, and in about five minutes, no less, for selling Picasso's "Boy with a Pipe" last May.

Mayer is now spending just over $5 million for a 3,000-square-foot condo on a high floor in the complex's south tower. "It is all about the views and the art," says our source. And we thought it was all about the Benjamins.


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[krulltime]

BIG DEAL


Published: July 4, 2004

A New Home He Helped Build

Donald J. Trump Jr. has moved into a two-bedroom apartment in his father's Trump Place development, beside the West Side Highway. City records show he paid $990,000 for the condominium, which is on a lower floor of a 50-story building at West 70th Street.

"It's what I could afford at this stage of my life," said the son of the man whose life is an advertisement for conspicuous consumption. He paid cash for the apartment at the closing June 17, he said. Asked why he didn't choose an apartment higher in the building, he said, "It wasn't an option for me to have a penthouse."

Mr. Trump, 26, executive vice president of development in the Trump Organization, was living on Central Park South before moving to the Trump Place tower, which was completed last year. "The apartment is great," he said. "It was the first project I started working on when I started working in the Trump Organization."


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

July 11, 2004

BIG DEAL

A Posse of the Fabulous Braves the Far, Far West

By WILLIAM NEUMAN


Meryl Streep's move to West Street has created a kind of celebrity critical mass.

A MIGRATION is taking place. From Richard Meier's green-glass condo creations at Perry Street in the far West Village to the celebrity magnet of Morton Square to MERYL STREEP'S proximate ascension to the $8.95 million penthouse at River Lofts in TriBeCa, the well known and the well-to-do are massing on Manhattan's western shore.

Attracted in part by the long green swath of the new Hudson River Park, developers continue to shovel more of the long green into projects that take advantage of the views and underused spaces of the island's once industrial edge.

"The whole West Side is boiling," said Peter Moore, an architect and developer with several projects off West and Canal Streets.

Suddenly, traffic-clogged, noisy, isolated, sterile, quasi-suburban West Street is the epitome of real estate cool. "We love the fact that there's not going to be anything built in the middle of the West Side Highway," said AMY POEHLER, the actress who appears on "Saturday Night Live" and in "Mean Girls."

"To have at least one possible promise that you won't be obstructed is pretty great in New York," said Ms. Poehler, who with her husband, the actor Will Arnett, has just bought a two-bedroom condo overlooking the Hudson River at Morton Square, where studios cost $950,000.

Michele Kleier, a broker at Gumley Haft Kleier who helped the couple find their new apartment and sell their old one on Washington Street, called it "the new frontier."

"So many things are opening up down there, and people like to be in the vanguard," she said. Now, Ms. Streep's move to West Street — abandoning, in the process, a town house in the heart of Greenwich Village — has created a kind of celebrity critical mass. "I just want to live within a mile radius of where Meryl Streep lives; call me a stalker, that's my goal," Ms. Poehler joked. "Wherever she is, I know that's the place to be."

Here are some of the newest developments on West Street and beyond:

¶At 423 West Street, just north of the Richard Meier towers in the old home of the Pit Stop car-repair shop, Michael Yanko, a developer, is planning a 23.5-foot-wide, 10-story sliver tower with 8 condo units, to be marketed by the Corcoran Group. Mr. Yanko is proposing to install a chef in a basement kitchen who would cook dinners for residents.

¶Designers for CALVIN KLEIN are hard at work fitting out his triplex penthouse at the Meier towers on Perry Street, at the same time that MARTHA STEWART and NICOLE KIDMAN are trying to flip their units without ever moving in.

A few feet to the south of the Richard Meier towers, at 165 Charles Street, the developers Izak Senbahar and Simon Elias are building a third, 31-unit tower designed by Mr. Meier.

¶In what could cement this corner of the far West Village as a haute architecture ghetto, the architect Zaha Hadid, winner of the Pritzker Prize, is designing an unusual, fin-shaped building for a 22-foot-wide lot at 163 Charles Street, tucked behind the third Meier tower. The developer is Kenny Schachter, an art gallery owner married to Ilona Rich, a fashion designer and the daughter of the songwriter Denise Rich and her ex-husband, Marc Rich, the once-fugitive financier pardoned by President Clinton. Construction on the nine-story building with six condo units could begin by early next year.

¶Morton Square, at West and Morton Streets, will soon become home to MARY-KATE and ASHLEY OLSEN, the artist CHUCK CLOSE and the hockey player ERIC LINDROS. The project, with 140 condos, six town houses and 135 rental units, opens this fall. Morton Square is a short distance from the Archive Building at 666 Greenwich, home to MONICA LEWINSKY.

¶The United Parcel Service parking lot at West and Spring Streets may soon be sold to a residential developer. It occupies two full blocks roughly halfway between the territory at the north staked out by Mr. Meier and at the south by Ms. Streep. It also happens to be near a sanitation garage on a triangle of land at the intersection of Spring and Canal. The city says it plans to move the garage but doesn't know where or when. On a less odoriferous triangle across Canal, the Parks and Recreation Department is building a new green space to be called Canal Park.

¶The long-stalled plan to build a Philip Johnson-designed glass condominium building at 332 Spring Street at the corner of Washington, next door to the Ear Inn bar, is finally moving ahead. A development group that includes Charles Blaichman (an investor in the original Meier towers) agreed last month to pay upward of $20 million for a controlling stake in the project initiated by Antonio Nino Vendome. A garage on the site was torn down last month and construction could begin this fall.

Around the corner, work is progressing on a 104-unit building at 505 Greenwich Street due to open this fall. The actor Roger Howarth, who appears on the soap opera "One Life to Live," has bought into the building. The project has been so successful that the developers, Metropolitan Housing Partners and Apollo Real Estate Advisors, are now in talks to buy a nearby lot on Renwick Street, near Canal, for another new building.

¶Next door at 497 Greenwich, the 22-unit Greenwich Street Project, with its wavy glass front designed by the architect Winka Dubbeldam, is under construction.

¶The developer and architect Peter Moore is seeking zoning approval for a nine-story, 13-condo building at 471 Washington Street at the corner of Canal. And, with his partner, Mark Mancinelli, he is preparing to start work on an 11-story, 13-unit building at 302 Spring Street at the corner of Renwick. Mr. Moore is also converting two buildings to condos, 161 Hudson (27 units), where the Wetlands nightclub once was, and 157 Hudson (up to 16 units).

¶Fabian Friedland has acquired a triangular property at 471 Greenwich Street at Canal and Watts, where he is seeking a zoning variance for an eight-story building with 21 high-end units.

¶The Jack Parker Corporation has proposed zoning changes that would allow it to build a 275,000-square-foot residential tower that could rise some 21 stories on West Street between Washington and Desbrosses, according to documents submitted late last month to the city Planning Department. Madelyn Wils, the chairwoman of Community Board 1, said the community board would fight the zoning change because the building is "out of context with the size of the neighborhood."

¶A fever of condo conversion and construction is raging in a micro-neighborhood within TriBeCa around the intersection of Laight and Hudson Streets, in and around the Holland Tunnel's exit roads. Coming up: the Grabler Building, an 18-unit conversion; 48 Laight, a 10-unit building; and the Hubert at 7 Hubert Street, a 33-unit building.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[krulltime]

GIMME SHELTER


By Braden Keil
July 10, 2004

BARKIN'S BUYING

Mother-to-be Julia Roberts has already sold one of her cribs - after going to contract on her Greenwich Village apartment.

Convinced she needed more space, the willowy actress, who's expecting twins with cameraman-husband Danny Moder, put the 3,000-square-foot prewar flat on the market last month, with a $4.995 million asking price.

Perhaps even more interesting than the sale itself, is the couple who bought her lower Fifth Avenue co-op: actress Ellen Barkin and her billionaire financier husband, Ronald Perelman.

The dynamic duo, reunited after a brief split last May, have signed on the dotted line to take the relatively modest (for Perelman) nine-room abode, which has about 22,000 fewer square feet than their five-story Upper East Side townhouse.

"They just wanted to have a downtown place," insisted Perelman spokeswoman Chris Taylor.

Perhaps they needed a pied-…-terre away from the kids to further rekindle their romance.

The "cozy" three-bedroom apartment in one of lower Fifth's finest doorman buildings is certainly charming enough.

The renovated Edwardian-style pad on one of the building's higher floors features original prewar finishes, including beamed ceilings, a paneled library and (just one) maid's room.

While it certainly qualifies as a luxury property, it could be the least opulent digs the cosmetics mogul has purchased in some time.

After all, Perelman's credo has always seemed to run along the lines of "bigger is better" when it comes to his real estate.

His massive 57-acre Hamptons estate on Georgica Pond is considered one of the East End's premiere properties. His former Palm Beach home once held the record for the highest price ever fetched for a single family residence in Florida.

Taylor said the Perelmans have no plans to unload their 25,000-square-foot home in the East 60s.

Exclusive listing broker James Rosenthal of Douglas Elliman had no comment on the transaction.


Fourth home

Joanne Corzine, the ex-wife of Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ), has bought more high-priced Manhattan real estate.

Her latest acquisition is an unfinished condo of approximately 3,000 square feet in the Time Warner Center's north tower - the one above the Mandarin Oriental hotel - for about $9 million.

Whether she decides to live there - or even keep it for long - is another story.

Last year, Corzine flipped her 4,000-square-foot TriBeCa loft on Laight Street less than a year after she bought it. Her asking price was $6.9 million, several millions more than she purchased it for.

While her real home is in the New Jersey suburbs, she reportedly also has property in Colorado and the Hamptons. One of her other notable flips happened in 2001, when she and Senator Corzine sold their unfinished duplex condo at 515 Park Ave. for $18 million, for another nice multi-million-dollar profit.

Broker Royce Pinkwater of Sotheby's, who is said to have brokered the deal, had no comment.


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[krulltime]

GIMME SHELTER


By BRADEN KEIL
July 17, 2004

Galaxy of Homes

Star Wars starlet Natalie Portman has finally found a space station after searching a galaxy of homes in the downtown area.

The 23-year-old Harvard-educated actress has just gone to contract to buy a spacious condo in the newest waterfront building designed by Richard Meier at 165 Charles St.

Sources say Portman, who was spotted perusing an $8 million townhouse in Gramercy Park last spring, is taking a three-bedroom condo on a high floor with city and Hudson River views for just over $6 million.

The new 16-story tower - now under construction - comprises 31 apartments ranging from $1.15 million for a 680-square-foot studio to $18.5 million for a duplex penthouse of 4,551 square feet.

The project, taller and wider than Meier's twin-towered complex at 173-176 Perry St. - where the just-sentenced tycoon of taste Martha Stewart just sold her place - is expected to be completed by spring 2005, about the same time Portman's Star Wars: Episode III is due out.

Neither Portman, nor the project's marketing agents at The Sunshine Group could be reached for comment.


Not the Dakota, butÉ

It's official: Sean Lennon is the new owner of a Greenwich Village townhouse.

The 28-year-old son of Yoko Ono and the late John Lennon, closed on a double-wide Greenwich Village townhouse for just $5.49 million, after going to contract last May. The four-level prewar home has four bedrooms and eight fireplaces.

Located on a tree-lined street, the townhouse last sold for $225,000 back in 1976 - the year after the young Lennon was born. Sothebys broker Karen Hartnett had the listing.


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[krulltime]

BIG DEAL

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Published: July 18, 2004

Attention Kerouac Fans, You Can Buy His Chelsea Pad

The Chelsea town house where JACK KEROUAC wrote "On the Road" is on the block. The brick building at 454 West 20th Street where Kerouac hammered out the seminal Beat generation novel in the spring of 1951 has been given a complete ultramodern makeover on the inside, although from the outside it looks unchanged.

The building has been split into two units, with an upper four-plex going for $4.5 million and a lower duplex with a garden listed at $2.5 million, according to Christopher Caudwell, an associate broker with Halstead Property.

The building's transformation has been a sort of road novel written in brick and wood for Jon Kully, whose parents bought the building, which is 16 feet 8 inches wide, in 1999 so he and his sister, Deborah Kully, would have a place to live while working and studying in New York. Both siblings are architects with an avant-garde bent, and they made the building's interior an experiment in architectural theory.

The interior walls are made of frosted glass, so you can see the pipes, ducts and wires inside.

"It's a very bizarre design," Mr. Kully said.

Mr. Kully, 29, supervised the work, and it is obvious a lot of care went into the project, which, despite its roots in theory, has produced a comfortable home, with stained walnut floors, exposed brick and high ceilings.

Kerouac devotees frequently pass by on pilgrimage, Mr. Kully said, although no vestiges of his stay remain.

Still, Mr. Kully believes his design is in harmony with the writer's work.

"What we were interested in was stepping outside the box, being avant-garde, celebrating infrastructure, being free and liberated from convention," he said.


Madonna Helps Buy Building For Kabbalah School

Madonna, the rock star, children's book author and newly minted mystic, has helped buy a Midtown building that will be turned into a Kabbalah-inspired grammar school.

The Kabbalah Center paid $5 million cash in May for the aluminum-clad six-story building at 152 East 55th Street that had long been the headquarters of DR. ROBERT C. ATKINS, above, the diet guru. It was here that Dr. Atkins slipped on the ice in April 2003, and hit his head on the sidewalk, sustaining the injuries that led to his death.

Rabbi Yehuda Berg, the co-director of the Kabbalah Center, said the group would renovate the building and planned to open a school there by the fall of 2005. He said the cash for the deal came from a fund called Spirituality for Kids, which is partly financed by Madonna. The rock star gives the fund the royalties from her children's books. Rabbi Berg declined to say how much the fund had received from Madonna, but he said the money also helped pay for land in Los Angeles where the group plans to build another school.

In an odd twist of Manhattan geography, the new Kabbalah school will be next door to the mosque of the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan, at 154 East 55th Street.

The Atkins deal was unusual in several ways. A Manhattan doctor had initially gone into contract on the building last fall, but after she learned she had a serious illness, she became unable to close on the purchase, according to her broker, Paul Wexler, president of Corcoran Wexler Health Care Properties. That left the distressed doctor in danger of losing her $500,000 down payment.

At the same time, another doctor, who happened to be a Kabbalah disciple, had been in talks to lease space in the building after the purchase, only to learn that the deal was in danger of falling through. He told the Kabbalah Center representatives about it, and they looked at it and liked it.

"It was just all bang bang," Rabbi Berg said. "We looked at it and a week later we closed. It was a perfect scenario." And the doctor got her money back.

He said that teachers at the school would not be teaching children directly about the Kabbalah but that the Jewish mystical tradition would instead influence the school's philosophy.


Mets' Star Hitter Settles on TriBeCa

MIKE PIAZZA has gone into contract on a 3,000-square-foot penthouse condo at 161 Hudson Street, the TriBeCa building that once housed the old Wetlands nightclub, according to people close to the deal. The Mets' All-Star catcher and first baseman agreed to pay close to the $4.25 million asking price, one of those people said.

Mr. Piazza did not respond to a request for comment.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company