Obamacare, New York-style: FUBAR to the max
Thanks to the New York Post, I learned this morning that my current health care plan, called a sole proprietor plan, will cease to exist on January 1st thanks to the new rules of Obamacare, so I ventured onto the New York State healthcare marketplace website to find a replacement. My first discovery: the website […]
One57: Stalled Extellence
I got an earful today from one of the city’s top luxury apartment brokers on the stalled status of sales at Extell’s much-hyped One57, and the news is, alas, less than extellent. Months ago, as he touted sales of trophy penthouses for sums in excess of $90 million, Extell founder Gary “Dangling Boom” Barnett claimed […]
NoHo Nomad
I profiled the boutique developer Adam Gordon in the new issue of Alexa Luxe Living in the New York Post, on newsstands and online today.
Met Museum money mystery: Solved!
A longstanding mystery about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s much-debated pay-what-you-wish-but-you-must-pay-something admission policy is solved at last in an understated story on the fracas on the front page of today’s New York Times The Arts section. First reported in the New York Post, the mystery hinges on whether New York City ever formally approved “recommended” […]
Extell’s Britney Barnett: Oops, I did it again!
At this point, it’s hard to know what else to say. City favorite, DOB boy-toy and Community Board #5’s developer bestie Gary Barnett of Extell and his construction team from LendLease have once again lost control of their construction crane and caused chaos on surrounding streets as dead weight dangles above. Wait ! I know: […]
Pulling back the curtain on 15CPW
The fantastic cover of House of Outrageous Fortune has been outed on Atria/Simon & Schuster’s web catalog, and Curbed New York got there first. As always, the comments are a kick. “March is like, too many damn months away!!!” says one. I couldn’t agree more, but March it is. “Thanks for providing nothing more than […]
Vornado and Extell: A done deal…and now, a race to the sky? Another Gripepad exclusive.
The mega-tiff between mega-builders Vornado and Extell over two almost-kissing development lots between West 57th Street and Central Park South, and Seventh Avenue and Broadway, has ended, and Vornado’s 220 Central Park South should start climbing soon, only a tad behind Extell’s Nordstrom tower. So says a source in a position to know, who reports, […]
The new old condo
The Marquand on Madison Avenue is the subject of my latest Unreal Estate column in Avenue magazine. Built on the site of the long-since-demolished mansion of Henry Marquand, second president of the Metropolitan Museum, the current Marquand, erected before World War I, has been reimagined for a new generation of plutocrats.
‘Scuse me, while I kill the sky: Extell’s 1,550-foot tower revealed (sorta)
Extell’s latest towering erection on West 57th Street is set to be revealed tonight at a last minute meeting of the Landmarks Committee of Community Board #5 more than fifty blocks away from the neighborhood surrounding the proposed development (which is set to include a branch of the Nordstrom department store in its base and […]
Another seller at 740 Park: Got $29.5 million?
Plagued by bad press this summer due to a series of petty thefts (petty for them, at least), 740 Park is back in the news today thanks to the listing of its fourth floor D-line apartment by investment banking’s Peter Huang. The apartment was infamous when Huang was still married to his first wife, Nancy […]