In the waning days of the real estate boom, mogul Aby Rosen, owner of both the Seagram Building and Lever House, harbored grand ambitions for a humble six-story office building at 520 Fifth Avenue, near Times Square. Those ambitions, apparently crushed by the bust, have now precipitated a lawsuit alleging he withheld crucial financial Read More
With mutton-chop sideburns, a gone-fishing hat and a Ratatouille-style accent, Thierry Guetta is a character that documentary filmmakers pray for: gregarious, oddball, dogged and hungry for fame. In April, a documentary about Mr. Guetta—who’s either an overnight art-world sensation, or wholesale bogus creation—opens in New York, directed by British art-star Banksy. But fans of Mr. Read More
It’s been a long three years for Aby Rosen.
The landlord and art collector has tried for that long to get approval for an apartment tower at Madison Avenue and 77th Street designed by British starchitect Norman Foster. He’s gone to hearing after hearing at the Landmarks Preservation Commission, repeatedly rebuffed with instructions to Read More
This one goes to 11! The fanciest New York hotel projects challenged by the Great Read More
I’m not a big fan of dressing up like a prepped-out Hamptons dork.
Yet, there I was, sporting the obligatory blue blazer, linen shirt, khakis, and suede moccasins, desperately trying to fit in with the stuffy upper-crust crowd watching British scion Prince Harry take on Argentinean stud Nacho Figueras at the Read More
Perusing statistics on the city’s biggest commercial property deals is like going to the Empire State Building’s observation deck with tourist friends from out of town: You know it’s supposed to mean something, but New York can be so much cooler.
The statistics underline just how far New York’s property sales market has fallen, and Read More
Any New Yorker who’s asked about potential buyers’ interest in his tectonically enormous real estate is likely to exaggerate a bit. A biomedical venture capitalist, for example, told The Times in May that he’d turned down “five or six” offers as high as $100 million for his 15 Central Park West duplex, which didn’t quite Read More
The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission may vote on developer Aby Rosen‘s proposed Norman Foster-designed commercial tower at 980 Madison Avenue at its meeting next week, according to a Landmarks spokeswoman. Such a move would bring to an end a more than two-year debate over a planned tower at the site, which has Read More
Tom Wolfe responded in this week’s Observer to Aby Rosen’s allegations of anti-Semitism in Mr. Wolfe’s 2006 New York Times op-ed about Mr. Rosen’s plans for 980 Madison.
Here was Mr. Rosen in The Observer last week:
I like productive criticism; I try to criticize things all the time, not because Read More
Location: You like to give parties with dozens of Russian violinists and industrial quantities of caviar. Is decadence your worst trait?
Mr. Rosen: The last thing I am is decadent. … I’m a big thinker; I do a lot of stuff; I enjoy life immensely. … When I throw parties, I blow a lot of Read More
