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Additionally, a fire broke out in one of the apartments in 2016 due to a faulty sauna, damaging several other residences, including David Koch’s home, causing him to stay in a hotel while repairs were completed. The fire originated in J. Ezra Merkin’s unit (the man thought to have been the financier for famous swindler Bernie Madoff) because someone left something flammable too close to the heating mechanism of the sauna. It affected several nearby dwellings and caused significant damage, though no one was seriously hurt. This was yet another shocking experience in Koch’s fascinating life.Many residents don’t even worry about locking their doors; their upscale community is so exclusive. However, that may have led to a string of robberies in 2016. According to the New York Post article, the victims, which included four different households, never called the police during the 6-week pilfering spree – until it came time to report the items to the insurance company, that is.

The stately art deco style building even had auspicious beginnings. Destined for greatness, its construction was completed in 1929 by developer James T. Lee; the grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. One of its earliest well-known residents was John D. Rockefeller Junior, in 1937, who purchased a duplex – unit 15-16B. The luxury 19-story building holds just 31 co-ops, including duplex, and even triplex apartments, as well as the always coveted penthouse, of course. Speaking of the penthouse, check out these photos of the interior of the penthouse at 740 Park Avenue, last on the market for $27.5 million.Whether this bit of superstition has any truth to it or not is up for discussion, but one thing we can all agree upon is if you live at 740 Park Avenue, money is the least of your worries.

This famous address gets a lot of its reputation from the fact that some of the nation’s wealthiest people have lived here. And since it’s a co-op means being approved by a very discerning co-op board. This intimidating board has turned down the likes of people such as Joan Crawford, Barbara Walters, Barbara Streisand, and Neil Sedaka.

In 1971, Saul Steinberg, a New York businessman who was a millionaire before his 30th birthday and a billionaire before his 40th, bought the Rockefeller duplex for $285,000. In 2000, he sold it for around $30 million to Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of The Blackstone Group.Rochelle Harris is a passionate writer originally from Phoenix, AZ. who credits her success to integrity and determination. She has a great sense of humor, loves music and her family, and writes fiction and poetry in her spare time. She is excited about the New York experience and lifestyle! Follow Rochelle on Twitter at @LinguisticAnRky or get in touch at [email protected] There is also a bit of New York City real estate lore attached to 740 Park Avenue. It is said that whoever occupies the biggest penthouse there actually inherits the throne of NYC society itself – much like Rockefeller in his day. It is not just a co-op but a status symbol of powerful proportions.

One of the factors underlying the boom is foreign investment, often in the form of capital flight. Some of these buyers have poured money into high-end New York real estate for the purpose of tax avoidance, money laundering, or to export wealth to jurisdictions where it is less easily seized. Many of the apartments are only sporadically occupied, functioning as pied-à-terres, or as real-estate based “safe deposit boxes” for parking money.The ultra-luxury building boom in the area predates the term “Billionaire’s Row”. Deutsche Bank Center, built in 2003, is at the southwest corner of Central Park. A majority of its tenants bought their condos anonymously (through shell companies and trusts); at least 17 of these have been identified as billionaires. 15 Central Park West (CPW), two blocks north, contains units that have been purchased by billionaires Sara Blakely, Lloyd Blankfein, Omid Kordestani, Daniel Loeb, Daniel Och, Eyal Ofer, Pan Shiyi, Sandy Weill, Jerry Yang, and Zhang Xin. Prior to the sale of the $100 million penthouse at One57, the record for an apartment in New York was $88 million paid by Dmitry Rybolovlev for a penthouse at 15 CPW.The first supertall building to be built in the area was One57, a 1,004-foot (306 m) apartment building between Sixth and Seventh Avenues that was completed in 2014. By then, several other even-taller skyscrapers were proposed or under construction along the stretch of 57th Street roughly corresponding to the southern edge of Central Park. Due to the often record-breaking prices that have been set for the apartments in these buildings, the press dubbed this section of 57th Street “Billionaires’ Row”. The term has since been extended to other supertall luxury buildings facing southern Central Park not strictly on 57th Street.

The area is notable for containing some of the most expensive residences in the world. The top two floors of One57 sold to Michael Dell for $100.47 million in 2015, setting a record for the most expensive apartment ever sold in New York. Another bi-level apartment in the building was bought by hedge fund manager Bill Ackman for $91.5 million. The top penthouse at 432 Park Avenue went to Saudi retail magnate Fawaz Al Hokair for $87.7 million, and hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin is said to have bought four floors at 220 Central Park South for $238 million, breaking One57’s record for the most expensive home sold in New York City and setting a new record for the most expensive home sold in the United States. Also at 220 CPS, several units were combined into a four-story mansion costing $250 million. These projects have generated controversy concerning the economic conditions and zoning policies that have encouraged these buildings, as well as the impact these towers will have on the surrounding neighborhoods and the shadows they will cast on Central Park. As of August 2021, an estimated 44% of units in seven buildings considered to be part of Billionaires’ Row still hadn’t been sold.Billionaires’ Row is the name given to a group of ultra-luxury residential skyscrapers and the area surrounding them around the southern end of Central Park in Manhattan, New York City. Several of these buildings are in the supertall category, taller than 1,000 feet (300 m), and are among the tallest buildings in the world. Since most of these pencil towers are on 57th Street, the term has been used to refer to the street itself as well. Built in 1924 and designed by James Carpenter, 1060 Park Avenue is an elegant white glove building with stunning old world charm. 1060 is located in one of the most desirable locations in Carnegie Hill, the North West corner of 87th and Park Avenue. It’s two blocks from Central Park and close proximity to the Metropolitan Museum, Guggenheim, Cooper Hewitt, excellent public transportation as well as the best shops and restaurants. The majority of the apartments are 1 bedroom and 2 bedrooms – all with 10ft ceilings. Many feature dining rooms and wood-burning fireplaces. The building allows washer/dryers, pied-a-terres and is pet friendly. 50% financing is permitted. StreetEasy is a brand of Zillow, Inc. and registered trademark of MFTB Hold Co Inc. Zillow, Inc. has a real estate brokerage license in multiple states. See a list of these real estate licenses. § 442-H New York Standard Operating Procedures.

Built in 1924 and designed by James Carpenter, 1060 Park Avenue is an elegant white glove building with stunning old world charm. 1060 is located in one of the most desirable locations in Carnegie Hill, the North West corner of 87th and Park Avenue.Harry Macklowe is one of the real estate industry’s most famous and colorful characters, with a massive portfolio of properties and projects to go along with his outsize personality. No stranger to gambles and calculated risks, Macklowe found himself in a bit of a squeeze in 2008, as the seams of the property market began to tear and the bills from New York’s decade of excess came due. A highly leveraged real estate transaction backed by a $5.8 billion loan from Deutsche Bank kept his name in the news, and his stake in several trophy properties, like the General Motors Building, were said to have been in jeopardy.

This coming spring, the few dozen occupants of 432 Park Avenue, North America’s third-tallest building, will begin to move in. They will furnish their palatial apartments against a global backdrop of deflationary fears, central banks in perpetual crisis mode, massive unemployment, and stubbornly stagnating wage growth for 99% of the world’s population.Within a year, we began to get a sense of what 432 Park Avenue would come to represent. First, we learned that the number of condo units built would be closer to 100 than the originally planned 140. Next came details about the building’s sales efforts. Notably, while Macklowe Properties had kept 432 Park Avenue’s units off of popular broker databases like StreetEasy and the Residential Listing Service (RLS), the firm was going full-throttle in its attempt to court the Russian oligarchy. A kind of traveling sales office was set up at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Moscow’s Tverskaya Street, where dozens of billionaires pass through the lobby each day.

This explains why a city like New York can build dozens of ultra-luxury residential towers and continue to sell out. In New York alone, it is estimated that there are 8,655 full-time residents who would be categorized as ultra-high net worth, the most of any city in the world. Wealth-X finds that the average UHNW individual owns 2.7 properties and that 8% of their wealth is invested in real estate. Logically speaking, as their wealth grows, so too does their capacity to own and invest in an increasing amount of high-end housing.It is widely believed that the building will only be one-quarter occupied at all times, even though it will be completely sold out. Keep in mind that these are pied-a-terres that begin at $7 million each and include several full-floor parcels in the $75 million range. More than anything else, this speaks to the insatiable appetite of the world’s greatly expanded billionaire class. Middle Eastern oil magnates, Chinese billionaires, Russian oligarchs, and the Latin American aristocracy all have one thing in common: More money than they know what to do with and a desperation to get as much of it out of their home countries as possible. New York real estate works very well as both a facilitator of this as well as a store of value.

By 2011, CIM was everywhere. The economy was slowly improving, the financial firmament was beginning to thaw, and institutional investors were cutting checks again. It is in this recovering environment that a project as ambitious as 432 Park Avenue can even be dreamed of, let alone funded.

But these figures obscure an even more important trend taking root among the UHNW rankings: People with over a billion dollars in assets (there are 2,325 of them) saw their wealth increase by 12% year over year, while those at the bottom of the group—the 91,000 people with assets between $30 million and $49 million—realized a comparatively smaller 7% bump in wealth. Those at the top of the top are seeing their fortunes grow twice as fast as those at the bottom of the top. And the number of UHNW individuals who fall in the $750 million to $1 billion category saw their ranks swell by 20% this year to over 1,200 people. The bottom line is that the richer you are, the faster you’re getting even richer.By May 2013, Macklowe had announced that the top-floor penthouse was already sold for an astonishing $95 million. Half of the building’s apartments were under contract, with projections of $3 billion in total sales. This February, Manhattan realtor Douglas Elliman was brought on as the exclusive co-sales agent to help move the rest of the units.

Our story begins in 2009 with a little-known Los Angeles-based private equity firm called CIM. The firm’s three managing partners, a former Drexel Burnham banker and a pair of former Israeli paratroopers, quietly dropped in on Manhattan’s punch drunk post-financial crisis real estate market with money to spend. CIM moved quickly, writing checks to bail out some of the city’s most prestigious real estate families and firms, as projects were stalling and financing had all but dried up. The outsiders became Manhattan power players overnight.At 96 stories (1,396 feet), it has no company in the space it occupies atop Manhattan’s skyline. The Empire State Building tops out some 150 feet below that. Absent its spire, the newly built World Financial Center—itself a giant—is 28 feet shorter than this new cathedral to uber-wealth. 432 Park Avenue can be seen from all five boroughs of New York City, from inbound Metro-North trains coming in along the Harlem River, from the Meadowlands in New Jersey, and from several vantage points on Long Island. Its lone silhouette dominates the skyline from every angle. It demands your attention in a way that no residential building ever has.

Along a stretch of New York City’s Park Avenue, between 56th and 57th Street, soars a tower so jaw-droppingly altitudinous that King Kong himself would likely think twice before scaling it. In the Medieval era, towers were erected to separate royalty and feudal overlords from the rest of the population during times of plague and suffering. It was an effective barrier, both physical and symbolic. A 1,400-foot skyscraper, in America’s most populous city, in which fewer than 100 people will reside, is perhaps the perfect present-day parallel to such behavior. The ascendance of 432 Park Avenue to its now-dominant place in the skyline says more about the state of our world than a thousand Thomas Pikettys typing on a thousand keyboards ever could. In previous generations, when towers of this scale were erected, they were monuments to working. 432 Park, unlike the Chrysler Building, the World Financial Center, and the Empire State Building, is a monument to owning.

The most remarkable thing about 432 Park, however, is not just its sheer size. It is the fact that, in a building so tall and imposing, with over 400,000 square feet of usable interior space, there are only 104 units for people to live in. 432 Park Avenue is, in short, a monument to the epic rise of the global super-wealthy. It is the house that historic inequality built.The building is located in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is in the middle of the block bounded by 56th Street to the south, Madison Avenue to the west, 57th Street to the north, and Park Avenue to the east. The roughly L-shaped lot encompasses 34,470 square feet (3,202 m). The tower is centered within the block, while its base extends east along 56th Street to Park Avenue. The base has a frontage of 75 feet (23 m) on Park Avenue, though its main entrance is on 56th Street. Nearby buildings include Park Avenue Tower to the south, 550 Madison Avenue to the southwest, 590 Madison Avenue to the west, the Fuller Building and Four Seasons Hotel New York to the north, Ritz Tower to the northeast, and 425 Park Avenue to the east. The finalized plans called for 147 apartments in total: 122 luxury condominium units of one to six bedrooms between floors 34 and 96, and 25 studio units on floors 28 and 29. The highest units, on floors 91 through 96, contain layouts that differ from those of the units on the floors below. The tower’s condominium units feature 15 ft 6 in (4.72 m)-high ceilings. The smallest unit is a 351-square-foot (32.6 m) studio, while the largest unit is the 8,255-square-foot (766.9 m), six-bedroom, seven-bath apartment on floor 96, with its own library. A sample medium-sized unit, #35B, covers 4,000 square feet (370 m) with three bedrooms and four-and-a-half baths, facing south and west with views of Central Park. Macklowe initially placed thick frames on some of the windows, as he wanted to highlight the views of Central Park, but some tenants removed these frames because they took up interior space. The superstructure is composed of a 30-foot (9.1 m) square reinforced concrete core with 30-inch-thick (76 cm) walls and an outer shell of columns that taper from 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) wide at the bottom of the tower to 20 in (51 cm) at the top. The core houses the elevator shafts and mechanical services. There are six elevator cabs, including service cabs; the top floors contain two elevator shafts. The tower also contains an emergency-stair shaft with two concrete stairways. To maximize occupiable space, the stairways are installed in a scissor-stair configuration, in which each stairway’s flights are installed atop the other’s. The distance between the tower’s core and the exterior is 27 feet (8.2 m) on all sides. The developers received a $30 million mortgage from Pacific Northwestern Bank on the site in early April 2011. Later that month, CIM filed dummy permits for a 5-story office building in order to begin excavation work on the site and by the following month had hired Rafael Viñoly to design the new tower. Macklowe, speaking at a real estate conference in New York, claimed the building would be “monumental” and a “capstone” to his career. In October, plans were revealed for a 1,300 feet (400 m) tall condominium tower on the site using the address 432 Park Avenue. Previously, CIM had reportedly considered using the building’s lower floors as a luxury hotel similar to nearby One57 and spoken to operators including Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Taj Hotels, and One&Only Resorts. The next month, CIM purchased Turnbull & Asser’s storefront at 42 East 57th Street for $32.4 million and concurrently sold the nearby 50 East 57th Street to the clothier for $31.5 million, allowing CIM to expand their development site and Turnbull & Asser to remain on the same block. In December 2011, LVMH reportedly considered investing in the site for an expansion of the company’s “Cheval Blanc” luxury hotel chain, creating a campus with the company’s nearby LVMH Tower. In 2011, the former prime minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, alleged in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York that Firtash violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Specifically, Tymoshenko stated that Firtash had used CMZ as a front organization for funds that he skimmed unlawfully from RosUkrEnergo, the natural gas company that he jointly controlled with Russian state-owned enterprise Gazprom. Tymoshenko also alleged that Firtash planned to use the money for political purposes, rather than as a real estate investment; specifically, she claimed that the money would go to help her opponent, Victor Yanukovych, who becam
e Ukraine’s president in 2010.In late 2007, Joseph Sitt, founder of Thor Equities, introduced Macklowe to an investment firm named CMZ Ventures. The letters “CMZ” represented Arthur G. Cohen, a New York real estate developer; Paul Manafort, a former lobbyist, political consultant, and lawyer; and Brad Zackson, a frequent partner of Manafort and Fred Trump.

432 Park Avenue is located on the site of the former Drake Hotel, which was sold to Macklowe in 2006. The project faced delays for five years because of lack of financing as well as difficulties in acquiring the properties on the site. Construction plans were approved for 432 Park Avenue in 2011 and excavations began the next year. Sales within 432 Park Avenue were launched in 2013; the building topped out during October 2014 and was officially completed in 2015. After the building’s completion, residents complained of mechanical and structural problems, leading to a lawsuit in late 2021.Notable residents include Lewis A. Sanders, Bennett LeBow, Ye Jianming, David Chu, Hely Nahmad, Jennifer Lopez, and Alex Rodriguez. Other wealthy residents include Bridgewater Associates executive Bob Prince and Douglas Elliman owner Howard Lorber. Following his acquisition of the hotel, Macklowe paid French delicatessen company Fauchon $4 million to shorten the terms of their lease on the ground floor of the Drake Hotel and vacate in April 2007 instead of 2016. Shortly after the agreement was reached, Fauchon sued Macklowe in New York Supreme Court claiming that the developer was harassing the store to leave by blocking their entrance with scaffolding and threatening to cut off air conditioning and access to the hotel’s bathrooms. The floor plates of the tower stories are square with 93-foot (28 m) sides, giving each floor a usable area of 8,255 square feet (766.9 m). The floor-to-floor height of each story is 15 ft 6 in (4.72 m), of which at least 10 in (25 cm) is the depth of the floor slabs. Upper floors have slabs up to 18 in (46 cm) thick to add more mass, which dampens acceleration from wind loads. To finalize the structural design prior to construction, engineers performed a dynamic analysis for stresses, deflections, and horizontal movements to revise the tower’s lateral force resisting system against wind and seismic motion. When 432 Park Avenue was being designed, structural engineer Derek Kelly created a model of Midtown Manhattan to determine the wind forces that the tower would receive.The tower’s exterior is a lattice of poured-in-place concrete made from white Portland cement that forms a regular grid of 10-foot-square (3.0 m) apertures. Each usable floor features six 100-square-foot (9.3 m) windows per face, and each double-story windbreak features twelve unglazed openings per face. The base is clad with limestone, but no additional finishes were applied to the tower. Viñoly said that the regular lattice was inspired by a 1905 trash can by Austrian designer Josef Hoffmann.

Though Viñoly and Macklowe were friends, they often insulted each other over the various perceived flaws in the design. Viñoly called Macklowe “a truck driver with an education in aesthetics”, while Macklowe said that Viñoly’s supertall design was motivated by “penis envy” among the city’s developers, who were vying to build the tallest structures. In 2016, Viñoly reportedly joked that the design had a “couple of screw-ups”, such as Macklowe’s window frames, the placement of the restrooms, and Berke’s interior design; he later apologized for his comments.Also in March, sales officially launched from an office at the nearby General Motors Building, with units being listed at between $20 million to $82.5 million apiece. At the time, the developers claimed more than a third of the building’s units were already under contract. To assist with marketing, Macklowe spent $1 million on a four-minute film that would air exclusively in the sales center. The film, directed by Danny Forster and filmed at Silvercup Studios, follows a young woman leaving her English country house in a 1957 Rolls-Royce and taking a Learjet to her new home at 432 Park Avenue. The film also featured famed French high-wire artist Philippe Petit dangling from a helicopter, music by Cass Elliot, references to Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and the Pantheon, and depictions of King Kong, Le Corbusier, Al Capone, and Anna May Wong.Additionally, Nordstrom had signed a letter of intent to open their first New York store, a 253,500 square feet (23,550 m) flagship, at the building’s base. Macklowe had been in contract to purchase the Turnbull & Asser storefront at 42 East 57th Street for $33 million but the company’s owner executed a call option in the store’s lease to allow him to buy the building for $31.5 million instead. Jacob & Co’s founder Jacob Arabo also demanded $100 million for the store’s building at 50 East 57th Street, a price Macklowe was unable to pay. These holdouts meant Macklowe was unable to connect the other buildings he owned on East 57th Street, depriving Nordstrom of the space needed for the store’s ground floor entrance. Nordstrom also reportedly required a 18-foot-high (5.5 m) ceiling, which was not feasible at the site. This caused Nordstrom to back out of the deal and instead open their flagship in Central Park Tower several blocks west on 57th Street. In January 2010, CIM Group agreed to pay $305 million for the complete development site including 434 Park Avenue and 38, 40, 44 and 50 East 57th Street while keeping Macklowe involved as a partner. The investment by CIM allowed Macklowe to repay the senior-most tranche 90 cents on the dollar while the junior-most tranches were completely wiped out. At
the time, the site was considered one of New York’s most valuable due to its location between East 56th and 57th Streets on the west side of Park Avenue. Citigroup’s private banking arm raised an additional $415 million in equity for the project from high-net-worth individuals who invested $1 million to $5 million each. Another $100 million in equity came from CIM’s existing institutional investor clients. Following the investment, CIM continued to expand the development site, purchasing 46 East 57th Street for $42.5 million in January 2011. Construction was temporarily halted in February 2013 after crews damaged a neighboring building and the Department of Buildings gave the project several safety violations. Though work resumed within the month, a worker was injured in an on-site construction accident that March, when a piece of wood dropped from the fifth story. In mid-2013, developers filed a revision to the plan to add another floor. This was achieved by converting floor 95, a formerly double-height story, into two separate stories of standard height.432 Park Avenue has a mezzanine and 84 numbered stories. Five two-story windbreaks, spaced every 12 floors from the top, are unenclosed and serve to reduce the tower’s wind load. The windbreaks contain modular mechanical services for the six floors above and below to reduce required ducting. The floor numbering system includes mechanical levels near the building’s base, so the top story is numbered as floor 96.

Another CMZ Ventures investor was Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and leader of the world’s second-largest aluminum company Rusal, who was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2017. Deripaska agreed to invest $56 million into 432 Park Avenue through an investment fund named Pericles which was managed by Rick Gates, a Manafort partner who has since pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

Excavation for the building’s foundations began in early 2012. In March, CIM filed plans for the full building, revealing its 82-story, 1,397-foot (426 m) height. The New York City Department of Buildings issued the construction permit two months later. By September 2012, the building’s concrete foundation had been completed and the tower crane had been installed. The building passed street level by the end of the year. As construction progressed, 432 Park’s developers raised asking prices for the building’s units several times. A brochure in June 2012 indicated that units would cost $4,500 per square foot ($48,000/m), but that rate had increased to $5,800 per square foot ($62,000/m) by September 2012. By March 2013, asking prices had reached $6,742 per square foot ($72,570/m).In June 2016, Macklowe Properties agreed to pay $411.1 million to acquire the building’s retail component from CIM. Several months later, it was announced that boutique watch store Richard Mille would occupy part of the ground-floor retail space. The 4,200-square-foot (390 m), two-story store opened in October 2018. At the time, Richard Mille was the only retail tenant. Two months later, auction house Phillips signed a contract for retail space, consisting of 55,000 square feet (5,100 m) at the base of the building, as well as 30,000 square feet (2,800 m) underground, with plans to move into the space in May 2020. By the end of 2018, John Barrett also agreed to open a 6,300-square-foot (590 m) salon on the building’s second floor and boutique perfumery Amaffi leased 4,000 square feet (370 m) on the ground floor. Joanne Podell, broker for Cushman & Wakefield, stated in 2019 that she had to promise lower rents in order to attract retail tenants. 432 Park Avenue passed the 1,000-foot (300 m) mark in June 2014. The topping out ceremony was held on October 10, 2014, signifying that the building had reached its maximum height. 432 Park Avenue was nearly completed in January 2015 when work was temporarily halted again after another construction accident. In November 2015, Macklowe added a team from brokerage Douglas Elliman to supplement the developer’s internal sales team tasked with selling the tower’s units. By early 2016, several websites reported that 432 Park had been officially completed on December 23, 2015. The foundation of the building contains about 60 rock anchors that descend 60 to 70 feet (18 to 21 m) into the underlying bedrock, providing stability. To mitigate swaying further, the top of the tower contains two tuned mass dampers, and several additional dampers are located in the outriggers of some of the mechanical floors. The TMDs are placed between the 86th and 89th floors. Viñoly’s team decided to install the TMDs after simulating the tower’s projected wind forces at the Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland.The building’s amenities include 12-foot (3.7 m) ceilings, golf training facilities, and private dining and screening rooms. On floor 12 is an 8,500-square-foot (790 m) private restaurant with a 5,000-square-foot (460 m) private terrace, which has been led by chef Shaun Hergatt since 2016. Floors 12 through 16 comprise a “club unit” with a fitness center; a swimming complex with a 75-foot-long (23 m) pool, whirlpool, sauna, and steam room; private meeting rooms, including a 14-seat boardroom; and a library curated by Assouline Publishing. The Atlantic magazine described the screening room as having velvet armchairs and the meeting room as having mahogany paneling. 432 Park Avenue has 84 numbered stories and a mezzanine above ground. The tower’s exterior is a lattice of poured-in-place concrete made from white Portland cement. The tower is segmented into 12-story blocks separated by open double-story mechanical spaces that allow wind gusts to pass through the building. It features 125 condominiums and amenities such as a private restaurant for residents. The skyscraper has received mixed reviews from both professionals and the public, with commentary about both its slenderness and its symbolism as a residence for the ultra-wealthy. The skyscraper has received mixed reviews from both professionals and the public. 432 Park’s slenderness and simplicity have been the subject of both praise and criticism. For example, Jonathan Margolis of the Financial Times said, “I have become obsessed by the almost childlike simplicity of 432 Park Ave”. Aaron Betsky of Architect magazine called 432 Park “a gridded tube abstracting and punctuating the more leaden masses of the lesser boxes around it”, while James Gardner of The Real Deal said that “the sense of pure geometry, the almost polemical denial of scale, only enhances the sense of immensity.” Skyscraper Museum founder Carol Willis was optimistic that several Billionaires’ Row buildings would become New York City designated landmarks in the 2050s, saying: “I have no doubt that some—such as 432 Park Avenue and 111 W 57 Street—will be designated as superior examples of the iconic forms characteristic of New York of the 2010s.” Conversely, the architecture critic for New York magazine, Justin Davidson, wrote that the building is nothing more than “stacked cubbyhole units” and questioned the creative value of the building. The fashion consultant Tim Gunn described the building as “just a thin column. It needs a little cap.”Following his subsequent marriage to Patricia Landeau, Macklowe installed a 1,008-square-foot (93.6 m) portrait of the couple taken by Studio Harcourt on the northwest corner of the tower’s retail space in March 2019. The wedding’s 200-person reception took place on the building’s 78th floor in a condo that was turned into a temporary ballroom. The building also hosted an event for theater director Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center as part of the Park Avenue Armory’s “Armory Week” of art sales in January 2018. The event, attended by Macklowe, Zac Posen, and Claude Grunitzky, was notable for employing multiple nude performers in a departure from the more classically focused events of Armory Week which centered on 18th and 19th century art.Some critics have cited 432 Park Avenue as a representation of New York’s increasing cost of living and ostentatious wealth. A critic for the Los Angeles Times called the skyscraper an “architectural emblem of rising inequality”, while New York magazine called the building’s units “fancy prisons for billionaires”. Bianca Bosker wrote for The Atlantic magazine that some New Yorkers had given 432 Park the nickname of “Awful Waffle”, saying that New York City’s supertall buildings were “an eyesore” at best and a symbol of wealth inequality at worst. 432 Park’s association to wealth inequality was also remarked upon by the building’s own architect, Viñoly, who commented that “There are only two markets, ultraluxury and subsidized housing.” Several residents of nearby buildings said that the influx of rich residents a
t 432 Park Avenue would increase the worth of their own properties.

In 2016, 81 of the 104 units were sold at a median price of $18.4 million; by the following year, the remaining unsold units were put for sale at prices between $6.5 and $82 million. The first sale to be completed was that of apartment #35B, which was reported in January 2016 for $18.116 million, more than the $17.75 million asking price. Ten additional apartments were available at that time, ranging from $17.4 to $44.25 million.Due to these and other issues with the building, the condo board sued CIM Group and Macklowe Properties in September 2021. An engineer hired by the board discovered an alleged 1,500 flaws in the building. At the time of the lawsuit, only one apartment sale at the building had been finalized since the beginning of 2021, even though there were 11 vacant units. Prior to Labor Day in 2021, the entire building had to be vacated for two entire days for extensive repairs in the building’s electrical system. CIM filed its answer to the lawsuit that December, claiming that the safety complaints were “vastly exaggerated”.

As early as 2012, a dozen potential clients were described as being interested in occupying units at 432 Park, and by the next year, tenants had signed contracts for over a third of the units. The following year, that proportion had risen above 50%, with all of the tenants collectively paying an estimated $1 billion. By the end of 2015, close to 90 percent of the apartments had been sold, with almost half of those owned by a foreign citizen, “part of a global elite that collects residences like art.” Many of the buyers were wealthy Chinese, though there were also numerous Brazilian and Russian clients. The German newspaper Der Spiegel estimated that the majority of the units would remain unoccupied for more than ten months a year. Many buyers concealed their identities by forming limited liability companies to buy the units, and some buyers placed their apartments for sale without ever having lived there.The 21-story, 495-room Drake Hotel had been constructed in 1926 at the corner of Park Avenue and 56th Street. In January 2006, the hotel’s owner, Host Hotels & Resorts, was intending to sell the property “in the mid-$400 million range”, primarily marketing the site with the prospect of replacing the aging hotel with a mixed-use skyscraper. Harry Macklowe purchased the Drake in 2006 for $418 million (equivalent to $580 million in 2021).

The median higher-floor units were more expensive than the other units. Two units on floor 91 were sold for $60 million in 2018 to Caryl Schechter, the wife of hedge-fund manager Israel Englander, while three units on floors 92 and 93 were sold in 2017 for a combined $91 million. The 94th-floor unit was sold for $32.4 million in 2019, about 25 percent lower than the original asking price. The 95th-floor unit, originally listed for $82 million, was split in half in 2018 and the individual units were sold at $30 million. The highest unit, on floor 96, was listed at $95 million but actually sold to Saudi businessman Fawaz Alhokair for $88 million in 2016. The sale of all of the units was expected to bring in a total of $3.1 billion, the highest aggregate sales price of any building in New York City. As of February 2021, almost all of the units had been sold. After the structural issues at 432 Park Avenue were publicized, Alhokair placed his apartment for sale in June 2021 with an asking price of $169 million; this unit had still not been sold by the end of the next year. Conversely, one unit sold for $70 million in 2022, after the structural issues had been announced.CIM and Macklowe were sued by Franck Muller in September 2010 after the company tried to evict the watch retailer from their space at 38 East 57th Street that Macklowe had purchased several years earlier for over $60 million. The building was master-leased to a real estate investment company, Sovereign Partners, who in turn had subleased the ground floor and mezzanine space to Franck Muller until 2018. CIM and Macklowe had purchased that master lease for $5.35 million in November 2008, making a CIM-owned company Franck Muller’s new landlord. Subsequently, CIM and Macklowe had the building reappraised by Cushman & Wakefield who determined that the fair market rent for the space was $1.4 million per year, higher than the rent initially agreed to by Sovereign Partners. However, the CIM-owned company that had purchased Sovereign Partner’s lease failed to pay this increased rent, leading to an event of default under the lease and allowing CIM and Macklowe to begin the eviction process. Franck Muller objected, claiming that CIM was essentially choosing not to pay itself the increased rent and manufacturing an excuse to evict the CIM-owned master lessee and in turn Franck Muller, the sublessee. In October, a New York Supreme Court ordered the case be determined through arbitration instead.

The project’s second crane was installed in early 2012. In October 2012, the development also received $400 million in construction financing from hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund Management. The construction loan carried a low loan-to-value ratio of under 40 percent but an unusually high interest rate of over 10 percent per year. However, the loan was also nonrecourse meaning that the lender could not go after CIM or Macklowe’s other assets if they defaulted on the construction loan.In 2008, CMZ Ventures agreed to pay $850 million for the development site which would fully pay off the Deutsche Bank loan and represent a small profit on top of Macklowe’s total acquisition price. In fact, the purchase price was higher even than the appraised value of $780 million, a premium of over 10 percent which was unheard of for development site purchases. The partners wanted to build a 65-story building with a Bulgari-branded luxury hotel, condominiums, a private club, and a vertical mall. In late 2008, Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian natural gas oligarch and alleged associate of Russian organized crime, agreed to fund $112 million in equity and paid Manafort a deposit of $25 million. The deposit was wired from a Raiffeisen Zentralbank account that U.S. officials alleged was a front for Russian organized crime “boss of bosses” Semion Mogilevich. Manafort had met Firtash while consulting for the pro-Russia Party of Regions, at the time the ruling political party in Ukraine. French fund Inovalis also agreed to arrange another $500 million of equity for the project from various backers. Ultimately, the bid fell apart when CMZ could not arrange the necessary financing.432 Park Avenue is a residential skyscraper at 57th Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, overlooking Central Park. The 1,396-foot-tall (425.5 m) tower was developed by CIM Group and Harry B. Macklowe and designed by Rafael Viñoly. A part of Billionaires’ Row, 432 Park Avenue has some of the most expensive residences in the city, with the median unit selling for tens of millions of dollars. At the time of its completion, 432 Park Avenue was the third-tallest building in the United States and the tallest residential building in the world. As of 2023, it is the sixth-tallest building
in the United States, the fifth-tallest building in New York City, and the third-tallest residential building in the world.

In 2016, Linda Macklowe filed for divorce from Harry Macklowe. As part of the divorce proceedings, she filed a lawsuit in September 2017 claiming that Harry illegally shrunk a condo on the building’s 78th floor that Linda had agreed to purchase for $14.4 million. The couple initially agreed to purchase “his and hers” condominiums on the 78th floor in 2013, with Linda occupying the smaller “A” unit and Harry purchasing the larger “B” unit. After paying a deposit of $2.2 million, Linda claimed that the developers delayed closing four times and shrunk her unit from 2,663 square feet (247.4 m) to 1,766 square feet (164.1 m), giving the additional space to Harry’s neighboring “B” unit. The divorce court judge ordered the tower’s developers to give Linda until December 21, 2017, to decide whether to purchase the downsized unit. Linda instead chose to remain at the couple’s penthouse in the nearby Plaza Hotel and dropped her lawsuit over the unit’s shrinkage in exchange for the return of her $2.2 million deposit. The divorce trial also revealed that Macklowe earned just $2.5 million from his investment in 432 Park Avenue and held only a $15.7 million equity stake in the retail portion of the development.

Elected leaders in other major U.S. cities also see a need to limit space for cars if they want to draw people back to downtown cores that are highly dependent on the Monday-through-Friday office culture, but many of the visions still preserve at least some space for personal vehicles. Manhattan’s business districts generate nearly 60 percent of the citywide office and retail property tax revenues and 18 percent of overall citywide property tax revenue, making their stabilization key to pay for municipal services. More than half of office workers in major U.S. cities returned to their desks last week, a first since the pandemic began, according to swipe data tracked by Kastle Systems. But major New York employers don’t expect that figure to budge much higher anytime soon, according to a recent survey by the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit membership organization of more than 300 city executives.

“Fifth Avenue is not just one of New York’s most famous luxury boutique destinations. It’s also a major bus corridor, which is to say the whole avenue isn’t just for tourists,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance. “It’s also for New Yorkers, including folks from upper Manhattan and the Bronx, who elected Adams mayor.”NEW YORK — Fifth Avenue is one of the most iconic destinations in midtown Manhattan, the backdrop of classic films like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the entry point to Central Park and a marquee destination for shoppers at luxury stores like Bergdorf Goodman.

“Transit is central to this issue,” said City Council Member Keith Powers, whose district includes a sizable portion of Fifth Avenue. “But to do something there and ignore the pedestrian side of the equation, you’re missing a big component of it.” As shown in this rendering, Mayor Eric Adam’s early vision for Fifth Avenue makes more space for pedestrians and adds new plant life. | Fifth Avenue Association The city said it will contract with a design firm this year to put together a plan that will add pedestrian space, speed up buses and improve street safety. Other major municipalities, from San Francisco to Columbus, Ohio, have released their own proposals to reinvigorate office-heavy downtowns in part by restricting access to private vehicles.

Elected leaders are eager to draw people back to the area that has seen steep declines in foot traffic since the start of the pandemic, threatening tax revenue that funds essential city services and a hospitality industry that’s a major driver of tourism and jobs. But they must weigh any changes against the street’s function as a major transportation artery for hundreds of thousands of bus riders with connections to several subway lines.“It’s the spine of Manhattan, and when you come there, you should be experiencing something beautiful,” Wils said. “You should want to walk all the way from Central Park to Bryant Park.”

But it’s also choked with car traffic and inundated with pedestrians making their way around Nike, Coach and Rockefeller Center. New York City officials have complained for years that the thoroughfare is outdated, mismanaged and especially incapable of handling visitors during the holiday season. “You hate to, and I’m sure the merchants feel this way; you hate to say no private cars ever on Fifth. It would be very hard to do that,” Biederman said. Early renderings from the mayor’s office showing Fifth Avenue’s potential transformation reflect the plan circulated by the Fifth Avenue Association in 2021 as an alternative to the express busway, said E.J. Kalafarski, the transportation chair of Manhattan Community Board 5, which plays an advisory role on local land use issues. It preserves two lanes for buses and reduces the number of lanes for private vehicles from three to one. It also adds a bike lane, widens sidewalks and improves green space.

The Adams administration plans to make early improvements to Fifth Avenue this year and release a construction plan in two years. The ultimate cost — and who pays — is still unclear.

“What is clear today in the wake of the pandemic is that Midtown is the area that has suffered the most,” said Dan Doctoroff, a deputy mayor in Mike Bloomberg’s administration who led Sept. 11 recovery efforts and helped create the city’s new economic recovery plan.Adams, a more moderate Democrat, has taken a notably friendlier posture toward real estate than his predecessor, once declaring, “I am real estate.” He has received more than $150,000 in donations from people working in real estate in support of his reelection.Joshi, the deputy mayor, said the city’s goal is to make the street “more than just a shopping district,” with entertainment and seating that encourages people to spend the day walking the corridor. She’s pledged not to be swayed by the sizable real estate influence helping steer the project.The strategic plan for Columbus, Ohio, which still needs approval from its City Council, notes that most residents want alternative transportation to reduce car dependency. The plan includes renderings that add protected bus and bike lanes on multi-lane roads that have limited sidewalk space. San Francisco’s action plan similarly proposes strategies like “road diet” and “pedestrianized street” to bring more use to downtown corridors.“But, in order to make Midtown more vibrant, it’s not just about public places and making it more mixed-use,” he added. “You also have to address transportation issues, and you also have to grow.”The goal this time around is to strike a potential compromise with all the vested interests, at a time where there’s big appetite for post-pandemic infrastructure improvements.

Dan Biederman, president of the Bryant Park Corporation, a not-for-profit founded in 1980 to renovate and operate the nearly 10-acre park, similarly said his “bias” would be to preserve vehicle access in some capacity.

The Fifth Avenue Association is helping pay for the city’s new vision plan, along with three other private groups that manage different areas along the street: the Grand Central Partnership, the Bryant Park Corporation and the Central Park Conservancy.

Areas of the city that closed their streets to traffic at the height of the pandemic recorded a 19 percent increase in average sales at restaurants and bars compared to before, the city reported in a recent study of its Open Streets program. A December pilot program that made a stretch of Fifth Avenue car-free for three Sundays helped increase foot traffic and resulted in a “moderate” boost in sales, Wils said, without giving specifics.

“It has to be grounded in reason and fact,” she said. “Private partners may have opinions about those things, but we can’t avoid our duty to the larger public.”

“That would have exacerbated the exodus of a lot of tenants,” Wils, of the Fifth Avenue Association, said of the busway plan. The real estate-backed nonprofit funds supplementary services that help maintain the corridor, such as street cleaning.Drawing people back will require some incentives, said Madelyn Wils, chief adviser for the Fifth Avenue Association, the business group that represents retailers in the area.

Transportation advocacy groups said they will be holding Adams to his early promise to use the planning process as an opportunity to increase bus speeds along Fifth Avenue. Adams must meet a local mandate to add 150 miles of bus lanes throughout the five boroughs by the end of 2025, a target he’s not on track to hit after his first year in office.Sunny and serene “Classic Five” in pre-war Park Avenue apartment located in Carnegie Hill district. Mint condition apartment on a high floor with excellent light, split two bedrooms, two full bathrooms, high 10-foot ceilings, modern kitchen and thru the wall air conditioning.

Beautiful and well maintained this exceptional pre-war building was designed by renowned architect J.R. Carpenter. This co-op building in Carnegie Hill is close to express stops on subway and bus transportation; top museums such as the Metropolitan, Cooper Hewitt and Guggenheim; excellent shops, restaurants, service stores; and Central Park and top public and private schools.

Sunny and serene “Classic Five” in pre-war Park Avenue apartment located in Carnegie Hill district. Mint condition apartment on a high floor with excellent light, split two bedrooms, two full bathrooms, high 10-foot ceilings, modern kitchen and thru the wall air conditioning. There are replacement Pella windows in each room including kitchen and bathrooms. Floors are herringbone hardwood; bathrooms have marble floors. The thru-the-wall air-conditioning is in all major rooms, controlled by remote. The windowed, modern kitchen is renovated with top appliances including a Subzero refrigerator, Viking stove and microwave, Miele dishwasher, and new sink with DornBracht fixtures. There is a Bosch washer/dryer, custom cabinetry and granite countertops. Adjacent to the kitchen is a windowed mini dining room. The master bedroom has an en suite windowed bathroom. This elegant apartment has an excellent layout and pre-war charm with updated modern conveniences. Inquire about combining this property with the downstairs unit to create an awe-worthy four bedroom home.

Unlike the iconic musical institution with a similar name, you only need to take the 4, 5, or 6 Train to 86th Street in order to get to Carnegie Hill. Perhaps not as well-known in name, Carnegie Hill is certainly familiar to all as a wondrous piece of the Upper East Side that stretches from 86th to 96th and Third Avenue to the edge of Central Park. With limitless access to the park’s emerald greens, plus a portion of the famed Museum Mile and waterside views over the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir to its name, Carnegie Hill embodies and concentrates the essence of what elevates the UES to the status it maintains. Stunning homes within this rarified rectangular region are also likely to turn heads: refined townhouses, luxurious condominiums, and even the occasional mansion.Located at 1060 Park Avenue, The Niagara was built by James E.R. Carpenter in 1925 and converted to an 88-unit cooperative in 1984. The lobby is attended by a 24-hour doorman, and a resident manager is also on staff. Amenities include a central laundry room, bike room, and storage space for rent.

The Niagara is close to Central Park, Museum Mile, Madison Avenue shopping, the 86th Street 4/5/6 trains, and the M86 bus. Pets and pied-a-terres are welcome.

The report showed that in the first quarter of 2023, the median sale price fell in 28 of the city’s 50 most-expensive neighborhoods from a year earlier, while the number of sales dropped or was flat in 46 neighborhoods. Only four of the 50 neighborhoods had a median sale price of $2 million or more, compared with eight in the first quarter of 2022.

In the most expensive area, Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, the median sale price rose about 6 percent year-over-year, to $5.729 million; but in TriBeCa, the next most expensive, it fell 6 percent, to $3.5 million. Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn — a former industrial area now sprouting riverfront high-rises — was the third-most expensive neighborhood. But its $2.6 million median sale price was level from a year earlier, so it was price reductions in other neighborhoods that improved its ranking.

In the first Bronx neighborhood to appear among the top 50, Fieldston, the median sale price soared 149 percent year-over-year, to $840,000. The change reflected the fact that in 2023, 54 percent of sales there were of single-family homes (generally more expensive), up from just 7 percent a year earlier. Eight Queens neighborhoods were among the 50 most expensive, while Brooklyn claimed 22 spots and Manhattan 24. (Staten Island was not included in the study because up-to-date data was unavailable, according to PropertyShark.)1060 Park Avenue was designed by the esteemed architect James Carpenter in 1924. An especially elegant lobby is presided over by 24 hour doormen. Storage units- to rent- , laundry facility and bike racks are located in the basement. The building is 2 blocks from Central Park , in proximity to major museums, restaurants and all services necessary for convenient day to day living. Transportation is easy, crosstown, uptown, downtown by subway or bus is about 2 blocks away. The building is PET FRIENDLY and welcomes PIED A TERRE buyers

Entering the beautiful lobby of this distinguished pre-war building is to be enveloped in a world of gracious living .Rarely found 10 foot ceilings and a working gas fireplace elevate this 4 room apartment to a higher level than most. Light, airy living room and bedroom face South onto E. 87th Street. The dining room flex /home office has a wall of built in mahogany bookcases over storage cabinets and may be closed off with 2 sets of doors. A windowed bath is completely marble clad. Windowed kitchen with ample maple cabinetry, granite counters, washer/dryer, Bosch dishwasher and Sub Zero fridge provide for ultimate convenience. Further enhancements are Tilt & Turn windows with screens, hard wood floors and good closets. There is adequate wall space in this apartment for displaying art and either period or contemporary furnishing would work.Entering the beautiful lobby of this distinguished pre-war building is to be enveloped in a world of gracious living .Rarely found 10 foot ceilings and a working gas fireplace elevate this 4 room apartment to a higher level than most. Light, airy living room and bedroom face South onto E.CashNetUSA took a closer look at the most expensive cities in each U.S. state using real estate data from Zillow. By adding together the house prices in each area and dividing them by the number of properties, they were able to calculate the average price in each neighborhood.

Coming in at the least expensive of the top 10 priciest neighborhoods in NYC is Greenwich Village, and though the average home cost is nowhere near that in Hudson Yards ($4M compared to $7.5M) it obviously still costs a pretty penny. Well, just to put things into perspective, according to the study the beachside community of Manalapan in Palm Beach County, Florida is America’s most expensive neighborhood overall, with the average home here costing a whopping $39.7 million, where home owners have included the likes of Billy Joel and Don King. Hudson Yards is the most expensive, with an average home costing $7.5m. According to The New York Times, the area has undergone a $25b transformation, building over the West Side rail yard. It is now home to some of New York’s best prime residential and commercial developments.