Was the sky, or the wedding-cake ceiling, the limit?

Amassing and connecting a melange of co-op apartments scattered about a coal baron’s Fifth Avenue mansion was an outlandish dream, even for Howard Ronson, the commercial real estate developer who kicked off the buying spree at 828 Fifth Avenue, also known as the Berwind mansion, before his death in 2007.

His heirs tried to carry on, but they could never quite replicate their patriarch's acquisitive charms. With four of the nine apartments in hand, they stopped far short of Ronson's goal of total building domination. Nor could they (or would they) sell the spread, at least not for $72 million. After putting the apartment on the market in May, in a bid to catch one of the many over-eager trophy hunters said to be sniffing around New York, the family pulled the property just a few months later.

Several sources told The Observer that Ronson's widow Angelika and children have decided to stay put in their puzzle-piece palace. Or at least as "put" as renowned jet-setters said to spend much of their time in Monaco can stay.

Does this also mean they've decided to carry on Ronson's vision of re-assembling the entire house and returning it to its former glory? As they like to say, in for a penny, in for a pound. Or rather, in for $33.95 million (the amount the four apartments cost the Ronson family), in for $100 million (or more!)?

We'd wager that this clan is not quite so cavalier with its dough and that the decision to pull the property had more to do with a lack of interest. None of the former listing brokers—it was held by Corcoran brokers Sharon Baum, Leighton Candler and Deborah Grubman, as well as Stribling broker Alexa Lambert, returned The Observer's phone calls, so we can't be sure, but we'd say the agglomeration was not so popular with buyers and the family is waiting for a later date to list the individual units.

A $72 million sale would set a townhouse sale record and then some (the largest sale to date remains the $53 million dollar sale of the Harkness Mansion). The co-op record lingers at the same threshold, having been set this spring with the sale of the Courtney Sale Ross apartment for $52.5 million. And no matter how magnificent this corner mansion might have been, the units weren't even attached. After all, an ultra high net townhouse lover would probably be inclined to go for the intact Woolworth Mansion, listed at $90 million, rather than bribing/begging his neighbors to move out and then undertaking a huge renovation.

"I’m sure it couldn’t be bought," one broker not associated with the listing told us. "For god’s sake, it was a lot of different units."

kvelsey@observer.com

Andrew Rosen closes deal on Greenwich Village penthouse.

While it was rumored earlier this year that Theory honcho Andrew Rosen was paying more than $12.5 million for a four-bedroom penthouse at the St. Vincent condo conversion 130 West 12th Street, now there's proof. City records show that Mr. Rosen paid $13 million, a bit of a price bump over the $12.8 million that the sponsor unit was asking.

The building has a way of getting buyers to pay more than the retail value. Rosie O'Donnell also plunked down a little extra cash for her duplex penthouse, paying $50,000 above the sticker price. Maybe Mr. Rosen should bring on Stribling brokers Alexa Lambert and Sean Turner to help shill his company's clothes.

The garmento's new living room.

Details on Mr. Rosen's new four-bedroom, 3.5-bath home are scarce, given Stribling's super-generic listing. But it would appear to be the 3,800-square-foot, floor-through uber-penthouse, if we may call it that. Said penthouse boats 2,200-square feet of wrap-around terraces and wood-burning fireplaces in the living and dining rooms. Mr. Rosen is relocating from a 49th-floor duplex in Columbus Circle.

Interiors, if Mr. Rosen chooses to keep them, are by Cook + Fox Architects, but we certainly expect that he'll want to put his personal stamp on the space. He is, after all, the macher who is creating the closest thing America has to luxury empires like LVMH or Gucci, if you take Anna Wintour's word for it.

Alas, even with all that terrace space, we don't suppose Mr. Rosen will be able to stable any of the two dozen race horses he owns.  At least he can compare penthouses with fellow rag trader and friend Mickey Drexler, who snapped up a Tribeca "mansion in the sky" earlier this year.

kvelsey@observer.com

Mr. Lambert bought 69 East 82nd Street in 1978, two years after he also became a director at Hilton Worldwide. While the deed does not include a purchase price, mortgage documents show he took out a $300,000 loan on the place. Back of the envelope, he turned a profit in the neighborhood of 2,000 percent. (Update: If we're talking rate of return, though, it's a modest 12.5 percent.)

The buyers are W. Dexter Paine III and his wife Susan. He is a former KKR partner who now runs the Bay Area-based Paine & Partners. In January, they sold their two-bedroom pied-à-terre at the Sherry Netherland for $4.495 million to Roberto Moses Thompson Motta, a Brazilian investor on the board of Anheuser-Busch InBev.

The Paines will now be crashing a much bigger pad. The five-story redbrick dynamo has five bedrooms and six baths. A setback on the fourth floor creates the rare street-facing terrace. "Charming and in beautiful condition," writes the pack of Stribling brokers who had the listing: Cornelia Zagat Eland, Alexa Lambert, Emily Hanna and Marc Achilles. The home has been on and off the rental market for $50,000 a month, according to StreetEasy--not long after Mr. Lambert and wife Linda purchased a penthouse at 28 Laight Street for $6.9 million, plus a $207,000 parking space, in December 2006.

Downtown has come of age.

RELATED: Inside this reunion-ready townhouse. >>

Read past Manhattan Transfers here. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

"It feels like where Tom Hanks would live in a Tom Hanks movie where he was a guy who lived in New York," Stribling broker Alexa Lambert, who is marketing the building, told The Observer. "You know in the movies where they show the apartment and it's like, 'Yeah, right, nobody has that.' It's like the idea of what living in New York looks like."

The building has suffered its share of setbacks in getting to this point. The first set of condos, 22 in total on the 11th through 14th floors, came on the market in 2002, when the city was still recovering from 9/11 and the tech crash. Then it was revealed that the massive duplex penthouse was a little too massive, exceeding plans on file with the Landmarks Preservation Commission (the building is located in the Tribeca North Historic District).

No worry. Developer Stanley Scott--who had worked in the building since 1966 and bought it three decades later--had the duplex dismantled and rebuilt by master glass designer James Carpenter, who did the facade at 7 World Trade Center among other project. The staircase alone cost $1 million to manufacture, but when it was all done, the 7,493-square-foot pad set a new downtown record at $30.5 million when it was purchased by ex-con William Duker.

In the meantime, all that reconstruction held up closing on the second round of condos, built out on the seventh through ninth floors--everything below is a commercial condo, stocked with architects and other creative types. Deposits were refunded and it was not until this spring that the units came back on the market. "I think I was pregnant when we started this property, and now my son's shaving," Ms. Lambert joked.

Still, thanks to a shortage of inventory in one of the city's most sought after neighborhood, the two-, three- and four-bedroom lofts were snapped up in short order. Ranging in price from $3.5 million to $7.3 million, they are on the high-end even for this tony corner of the city. Ms. Lambert credits the finishes, including oak floors and gigantic casement windows, all while the building has no fancy amenities to attract buyers.

"I think people are willing to pay up for something they love," Ms. Lambert said. "The market for mediocre properties isn't the best."

Granted there were only nine units to sell in that nine month period, and even Ms. Lambert acknowledges she did not break the coveted $2,000-per-square-foot threshold that now seems to be the barrier for the most luxurious buildings. Prices averaged just under $1,900 a foot. But with hundreds of prospective buyers, the sell out still speaks to a paucity of product. (Ms. Lambert declined to identify any of her buyers, but she said there were "no investors, no speculator and no foreigners," mostly just bankers and well-to-do professionals as well as some family money.)

"Given the amount of development in Tribeca over the past decade, it's amazing the lack of inventory right now," said Bruce Ehrman, a Stribling broker who specializes in the neighborhood but was not involved with the project. "People are just circling and circling and snapping up whatever they can, because there's not much out there, especially product of this quality."

Market guru Jonathan Miller was less charitable with the building's two-month sell out. "That is good," Mr. Miller said. "I'd look at that and say that looks like a reasonable absorbtion rate. And it's certainly better than in recent years, so their timing appeared to be good."

One of the units is rethinking its timing, though. Early last month, that penthouse came back on the market for a $45 million, a bid to make Mr. Duker a tidy profit while skyrocketing him back into the record books, his purchase having since been surpassed at the $31.5 million Super Ink penthouse.

After only 17 days on the market, the crystalline penthouse came off. In a true sign of market madness, had it sold so fast? No, listing agent Leonard Steinberg of Prudential Douglas Elliman informs us, nor has it been rented. "It will be back late this year or next," he said without explanation.

So things are swell in Tribeca, but not yet out of control.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

What must have really bothered the brokers, this small batch in the running to have the odd honor of listing Bernie Madoff’s two-floor apartment between Park and Lexington avenues, is that they were all corralled together. “It was a strange and, frankly, slightly insulting way to handle it,” one broker there said. “Everyone in that room has pitched pretty important exclusives. I’ve never had to go on a cattle call before.”

Last year, when agents auditioned to list the late Brooke Astor’s Park Avenue duplex, they were interviewed separately in her famously lacquered library. It went relatively smoothly—even though they had to smile and nod while sitting in front of her scandal-stained son, Anthony Marshall, plus bankers from the firm that became Astor’s court-appointed guardians.

The broker meeting for the Madoff penthouse, which has been rumored to be going on the market since January, was stranger. “Everybody kind of wandered around the apartment, and they herded us into the living room,” another broker said. “I just don’t see how they can make an evaluation on who to use.”

There are a lot of options. According to three sources, brokers that have been contacted include Corcoran’s Sharon Baum (famous for her SOLD 1 license plate and its matching diamond brooch); John B. Glass and Caroline E.Y. Guthrie from the blue-blooded Edward Lee Cave division at Brown Harris Stevens; Stribling’s Alexa Lambert, who has handled sales at the Plaza; Sotheby’s top broker, Serena Boardman, and vice president Anne Corey; and Elliman’s Daniela Kunen and Sabrina Saltiel, who are listing the incarcerated Phillip Bennett’s Park Avenue duplex penthouse, plus a lesser-known colleague, Whitney Gettinger.

They came armed! Ms. Baum had Corcoran CEO Pamela Liebman with her; Ms. Lambert had her firm’s founder, Elizabeth Stribling; and Elliman CEO Dottie Herman was there along with the head of the firm’s Manhattan brokerage, Steven James. John Burger, the Brown Harris broker who told The Times this month that he’d offered to forgo a commission, was not there.

As it turned out, the meeting with the federal marshals was more of a group info session than an audition. “What they said was, ‘I wish we could give it to all of you,’” Mr. James explained. “‘Look and see what the product is; advise us on what we should do; here’s the deadline for the proposal, and may the best person win.’”

By the end of last week, brokers sent in their proposals for how they would market the place, how much they would list it for (their pitch can’t be too discouragingly low nor too misleadingly high) and what kind of commission they’d demand (which, as Mr. Burger’s offer showed, will probably be modest).

One of the agents there guessed that the penthouse is worth $8 million, but will sell for less because of its ignominy—and its condition, which, despite Mr. Madoff’s reputation for punctiliousness, is imperfect. “So not triple-mint,” an agent said. “That to me was incredibly surprising.”

“I thought it was eerie,” another said. “The place was left as if someone got out in the middle of the night. All the clothes were there, there was a note, there was a cup of coffee on, I think, his desk. The only that was gone were the photos: the picture frames had no pictures.”

mabelson@observer.com