By Kim Velsey and Stephen Jacob Smith 4/26 6:28pm

Manhattan Transfers

Not quite as magical as Mr. Schecter thought.

Another Overpriced Trophy Listing Pulled From the Market: Steel Magnate Decides Not To Sell 15 CPW Pad After All

As any Times Styles section writer knows, it takes at least three to make a trend, so we guess we can officially call it now: the much-ballyhooed real estate trophy market is over-hyped.

Today, yet another ambitious trophy listing was yanked from the market, slinking away just a few weeks after taking a $10 million price cut. Leroy Schecter’s 35th-floor spread at 15 Central Park West, which made such a big show of asking $95 million when it debuted last August, is no longer for sale. And like City Spire and the Woolworth Mansion before it, the 15 CPW departure was not occasioned by a sale. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/05 2:25pm

Manhattan Transfers

It's magical, but not magic.

Steel Magnate Gets A Little (But Just a Little!) Less Greedy at 15 CPW

Given the massive profits that many early buyers at 15 Central Park West made flipping their units, it sometimes feels like no price is too high for an apartment in New York’s newest pre-war building.

Well, it looks like steel magnate Leroy Schecter has finally learned how much is too much: $95 million.

Mr. Schecter just cut a whopping—or, at least, it would be whopping in any other building—$10 million from the ask on his 35th-story apartment, to a still-stratospheric $85 million, which would put it below the $88 million record price that Dmitri Rybolovlev paid for Sandy Weill’s penthouse. Read More

By Kim Velsey 11/01/12 11:37am

Manhattan Transfers

The condo is a grand 1,916 square feet and it's relatively far from the Hudson.

15 CPW Reasserts Its Real Estate Dominance In a Post Sandy New York

Will Hurricane Sandy have a negative impact on Manhattan’s luxury real estate market? A brand new listing at 15 Central Park West doesn’t think so. The listing for the two-bedroom, 2.5-bath condo went live today, asking what has now become de rigueur in that celebrated building: twice the price the current owner paid.

Yes, No. 16L, purchased the sponsor unit in 2008 by Kalawati Company LLC for $4.7 million is now asking $8.5 million. Read More

By Kim Velsey 10/08/12 10:14am

Manhattan Transfers

9 Photos

FaceMate Founder Not a Match For 15 CPW

Find Your FaceMate Founder Christina Bloom Is No Longer In Love With 15 Central Park West

We’re not sure what happened between Christina Bloom and apartment 3E at 15 Central Park West. Maybe Ms. Bloom, who bought the two-bedroom, 2.5-bath apartment as a sponsor unit back in 2007, didn’t have a good idea of what the apartment would look like? We would certainly think that a woman who started a dating site based on matching people up with people who look like them would have given the apartment’s aesthetic qualities a careful look before deciding it was the one. But clearly, the apartment was not a good fit for Ms. Bloom, who has been trying to sell the place, on and off, since 2010.

Whatever happened to soul mates? Well, as Ms. Bloom writes about Find Your FaceMate “no matter how attentive, loving and kind a new partner might be, if he or she is not a facial feature match, it’s unlikely you will have the attraction necessary to take your mind off a previous love and offer the possibility of new love.” Intrigued? You can watch her talking more about this technology in her 15 CPW kitchen. Read More

By Kim Velsey 9/07/12 8:55am

Manhattan Transfers

13 Photos

Bathroom after glorious bathroom

Gold Diggers: Asking $44 M., 15 CPW Pad Is Trying To Double Its Money

How important is a bathroom to you? Really, really important? How about $44 million important? This was the question we kept on asking ourselves as we flicked through the photos of 24A/24B at 15 Central Park West. Bathrooms figured heavily into this photo gallery and the 5.5 bathrooms were truly the most stunning thing about the pricey pad.

Besides marble in such abundance that our head was soon swimming, there is a Jacuzzi, media systems and an aroma/chroma-therapy steam shower—a set-up where you can add essential oils to the showerhead, then watch a kind of light show as you shower to regulate your moods. Read More

By Kim Velsey 9/04/12 8:00am

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks bought his Ritz Carlton pad for $18.8 million in 2007. Now he's asking $50 million. The excuse? A stunning renovation.

Pursuing Perfection, One Massive Renovation At A Time

The paint had scarcely dried at 15 Central Park West before the building’s first residents set to knocking down the walls and stripping out the ultra-luxury condo’s ultra-luxurious finishes. Not that the finishes were lacking—like the layouts, they were widely considered to be exquisite—a stunning marriage of old-fashioned grandeur and modern sensibilities. In fact, ex-Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill thought that architect Robert A.M. Stern had done such a fine job designing the building that he hired him to do a massive renovation on his brand new, $43.7 million penthouse.

In the upper echelons of Manhattan real estate, the pursuit of perfection is as common as Sub-Zero refrigerators and private elevator landings. Haunted by dreams of what could be, owners are forever tearing magnificent properties apart in the hopes of transforming them into even more magnificent properties.

Such dreams often pay off handsomely. To wit, Mr. Weill’s freshly-renovated penthouse was so striking that it fetched $88 million shortly after completion. But of course, it would surprise no one, particularly not Nicholas S.G. Stern, son of A.M. and the owner of boutique construction concern Stern Projects LLC., if the Russian tycoon who bought the celebrated spread started his own renovation any day now. Read More

By Patrick Clark 8/27/12 1:37pm

Stratospheric Sales

j-michael-evans-193x193

J. Michael Evans May Lead Goldman, Prefers $27.5 Million Digs at 995 Fifth Ave. to Joining Blankfein at 15 CPW

Here are the things you need to know about J. Michael Evans: he is a Goldman Sachs vice chairman, a potential successor to Lloyd Blankfein, an Olympic gold medalist with the 1984 Canadian rowing team and a man of a certain sort of confidence. What sort? “Any great rowing crew has a strong, shared confidence in its ability to win,” Mr. Evans said in an interview for a Goldman publication head of the London Olympics. “You don’t often see this spirit in any pre-race histrionics—the high fives and chest-thumping seen in other sports. Instead, successful teams exhibit unspoken self-belief that sustains the crew throughout the race.” Read More

By Kim Velsey 8/08/12 12:56pm

Stratospheric Sales

More, more, more!

Steel Magnate Wants $95 M., Five Times What He Paid in 2008, for Tearing Down a Wall at 15 CPW

So many of 15 Central Park West’s residents have flipped their apartments for such massive sums that it sometimes seems like the whole building is cheating at tiddlywinks with the New York real estate market. Especially after the $88 million sale of Sandy Weill’s apartment, residents might be forgiven when they list their apartments for prices that seem somewhat deluded. Still, Leroy Schecter’s bid to make $40 million for tearing down a wall seems straight-up delusional. Read More

By Kim Velsey 7/12/12 11:00am

Manhattan Transfers

7 Photos

Another Audacious Ask

Embattled Italian Mogul Piofrancesco Borghetti Selling Off 15 CPW Spread

Apartment 32C is situated in one of the towers of 15 Central Park West—a lofty, three-bedroom perch from which to view the city, although perhaps not so lofty as the asking price of $27.7 million.

Italian business bigwig Piofrancesco Borghetti, who serves as chairman of the board at Marbert Holding AG and a handful of other powerful companies, bought the spread for just $9.8 million in 2008, according to city records. Read More

By Kim Velsey 7/10/12 7:20pm

Stratospheric Sales

Howard Marks $50 M. apartment and the Ritz's big hope.

Putting On the Ritz-Carlton: Has Its Moment In the Sun Finally Come?

Let’s face it: prices at the Ritz-Carlton, while resplendent, pale in comparison to the blindingly spectacular sales at buildings like 15 Central Park West and the Plaza. But with the $70 million Steve Wynn buy behind it and a new $50 million listing, The Wall Street Journal asks: is the Ritz ready to rise again?

It’s not as if the building has been doing shabbily or anything, but it hasn’t been the brightest star in the sky, The Journal notes. Built in 1930 as the Hotel St. Moritz, it’s lost some of the luster it once had and its debut on the luxury market was less than stellar. The condo conversion finished shortly after Sept. 11, and then the building got kind of eclipsed by the Time Warner Center and 15 Central Park West. Read More