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Stephen Jacob Smith

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/13 3:12pm

Manhattan Transfers

1049 "Fifth" Avenue.

Occupy Fifth Avenue: John Zuccotti Buys On (Well, Near) a Different Park

John E. Zuccotti may have a park of his own downtown, made famous by the Occupy Wall Street protests that centered around the privately-owned public space, but when he and his wife Susan decided to pick up an apartment in Manhattan, they chose a more classical park to look out onto: Central Park.

The real estate titan (you don’t get a park in Lower Manhattan named after you for nothing—he’s the chairman of Brookfield Properties American division and was a partner at Olympia & York, the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York and has served on the Planning Commission; for a brief period in the the ’70s, he was even an establishment favorite for mayor) picked up a two-bedroom on the sixth floor for nearly $2.6 million—a number that, on Fifth Avenue, suggests a striking degree of modesty. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/13 9:00am

Elsewhere

On the Market: 1 WTC Spired But Struggling; Side Boob at Stuy Town; Bangladeshis Rebuild Brownstones

No major leases signed at the WTC since Condé Naste. [Crain's]
WeWork joints Forest City Ratner for Seward Park bid. [WSJ]
One World Trade Center gets its spire [AP]
TRD reviews Charles Bagli’s Other People’s Money [TRD]
Side boob at Stuy Town! [NYP]
Bangladeshis in Kensington dominate brownstone restoration. [NYT]
The Journal thinks Prospect Park South is next to Park Slope. [WSJ]
Guys, people like skyscraper views and The Times is on it! [NYT]
Greenpoint gripes about the G train. [Crain's]
Eyal Ofer switches from offices to apartments and gets noticed. [WSJ]
Two alternative beaches for Pier 42 on the Lower East Side. [DNAinfo]
Floral Park gets anti-McMansion rezoning. [WSJ]
Park Slope mansion with 90-foot ballroom asks $6.5 million. [Curbed]

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/10 3:53pm

Developing Situations

There are a lot of hospitals in the area. Could you tell?

At Home Among the Hospitals? David Winter’s Firm Buys East Side Development Site

Along its most institutional stretch between the East Village and Murray Hill, the condos First Avenue is best known for are medical, not residential. From Bellevue to NYU, it’s a place where people want their stays to be as brief as possible.

But with Manhattan’s residential market coming roaring back to life, developers are setting their sights on the island’s less-developed fringes. New York’s first modern micro-apartments are going up on a city-owned site at 335 East 27th Street and Michael Stern’s JDS Development is nipping at the heels of Kips Bay, with a two-tower, 800-unit project set to break ground this summer at an old ConEd site at First Avenue between East 35th and 36th Streets.

“The  neighborhood is crying out for something modern and upscale,” he told the Wall Street Journal in March.

And now 40 North, a press-shy wealth management firm with offices on the 30th floor of the ultra-prime Solow Building, is plunging straight into the heart of the hospital district. The firm just picked up a $32 million chunk of land on the southeast corner of First Avenue and East 24th Street. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/09 5:20pm

Manhattan Transfers

A rolling stone gathers no moss, but can a $17.5 million townhouse gather a buyer?

Rock On: Jane Wenner Lists The UWS House That Rolling Stone Bought

When Jann and Jane Wenner split in 1995, the coupled stayed married,  putting off the legal wrangling that would inevitably arise when they split their publishing empire. Mr. Wenner borrowed $7,500 from his own family and from the family of his wife to found Rolling Stone, and once it grew into an empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars and includes Men’s Journal and Us Weekly, it would be understandable if the vagaries of divorce just didn’t seem worth it.

Until, that is, 2011. Mr. Wenner had been living with his partner, Matt Nye, a former Calvin Klein model 19 years his junior with whom he’s raising three kids, and Ms. Wenner finally wanted out. (There was speculation that the divorce was finalized because Mr. Wenner and Mr. Nye wanted to formally marry each other, but despite the legalization of gay marriage in New York, that never came to pass.) There was a little acrimony in the divorce, including a lawsuit filed by Ms. Wenner’s Amagansett groundskeeper, but things seem to have gone as smoothly as a divorce can be expected to go and Jane Wenner got to keep the couple’s Upper West Side townhouse, at 37 West 70th Street. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/08 4:57pm

Disappointments

We love you, No. 54, but you're bringing us down.

The Nay-Sayers Were Right: Observer Manse Sells at a Loss

Last week, when we wrote up the contract signing on The Observer’s old Upper East Side home, the brokers we spoke with were skeptical that the house would fetch its ambitious $28 million ask.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be low,” one veteran townhouse broker of 54 East 64th Street told us. Another concurred, throwing in a dig at Douglas Elliman super broker Dolly Lenz, whom the source claimed “tends to kind of dump her stuff.” Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/08 12:44pm

Manhattan Transfers

She's a survivor.

Central Park West Manse Tries for Another West Side Record

Robert A.M. Stern’s 15 Central Park West may be the hottest building in New York, but the good fortune hasn’t crept up the western edge of the park, which still plays second fiddle to the Fifth and Park when it comes to closing prices. There are some standouts, though, and the townhouse at 247 Central Park West is most definitely among them. Whether it stands out tall enough to get its $37 million ask is another question entirely.

Built in 1887, it’s the first townhouse you encounter on Central Park West—a rare holdout to withstand two waves of rapacious early 20th century redevelopment. The first, around the turn of the century and the construction of the city’s first subway on Broadway, saw developers raze townhouses and tenements all around No. 247 and its two neighbors on the block to erect apartment houses of a dozen or so floors. During the second boom, around the time the IND Eighth Avenue Line was being built underneath Central Park West and right before the Great Depression, the pressure mounted and builders strove for even loftier heights, with buildings as tall as the 30-story El Dorado eating away at what remained of the low-slung real estate. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/07 3:35pm

Purple People Eaters

You'd never guess it, but Vanderbilt Hall was actually build in the '50s.

You Win Some, You Lose Some: NYU Checked in South Village, Approved for Expansion in NoHo

If you thought that the war over New York University’s expansion in and around the Greenwich Village was over, think again: the university’s banner “NYU 2031″ plan to add infill buildings to its superblock may be over (okay, well, almost over), but skirmishes continue on the periphery, and two battles that broke out over the past week showing no sign of abating.

The first battle involved the new South Village historic district, which preservationists wanted to go hand-in-hand with  the Hudson Square rezoning. Preservationists claimed that the rezoning, in addition to endowing property owners with millions of square feet of residential development rights in exchange for ensuring that nothing like the Trump SoHo would ever happen again, would imperil the unprotected historic neighborhood next door. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/06 4:41pm

Manhattan Transfers

Modest façade yields modest returns.

Hedge Fund Honcho John Thaler Makes 3.4% Annual Return on the Upper East Side

John Thaler is best known for his tech-heavy hedge fund picks, but this morning he cashed out on a more old world investment: real estate. The JAT Capital manager just sold his condo combo at 450 East 83rd Street for $5.2 million, according to city records.

Mr. Thaler bought the two 17th-floor apartments at the Cielo in 2006 and 2009, for a combined total of almost $4.4 million. After an average of five years of ownership, his profit—exclusive of any taxes, fees or renovation costs—comes out to about $800,000, or an average return on his initial investment of about 3.4 percent per year. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/02 3:56pm

Manhattan Transfers

For $23 million, you'll no longer have to gaze longingly at the limestone loggia perched atop at 10 Gracie Square.

$23 M. to Live Next to Gloria Vanderbilt’s Old Penthouse

Not often do penthouses at Manhattan’s “Good Buildings” (as per Tom Wolfe, according to whom there are only 42) come on the market, but today is one of those rare days: the south penthouse at 10 Gracie Square was just listed for $23 million.

The white-glove building sits in the rarefied hinterlands of the far East Side, overlooking Carl Schurz Park, and once had a yacht mooring onto the East River, sadly disfigured by the FDR (which is decked over beneath the ritziest buildings—a coincidence, we’re sure). Moreover, the penthouse occupant gets an up-close view of the building’s rooftop fixture, which is rumored to be, along with that on top of 1040 Fifth Avenue, the inspiration for 15 Central Park West’s crown. Read More