Don't be fooled by the exterior, this place needs work

Known for her prominent public sculptures and unconventional materials, conceptual artist Teresita Fernández is a master of transformation. And a good thing, too, given that 165 Bond Street, the townhouse she just purchased, could use a major one.

Ms. Fernández bought the gut-renovation-ready home for the list price of $1.2 million from Frances Ortiz, according to city records. Coldwell Banker Reliable broker Mary Kay Higgins didn't pull any punches in the listing, which skips euphemistic chatter about charm and TLC and goes straight to the square footage and zoning details. A YouTube video of the listing (see below) shows dingy, junk-filled rooms, fake wood paneling and a blue-tiled bath right out of a 1970s horror movie. A close-up of the trash-strewn yard completes the depressing montage, though the piano chords do seem to perk things up.

No word on whether Ms. Fernández, who lives nearby on Douglass Street, plans to use the building as a home or a studio.

Maybe the artist, a winner of the 2005 MacArthur Fellowship and a member of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts who shows at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in Chelsea, was just looking for a different kind of project.

Ms. Fernández, who is originally from Miami, has professed her love for the borough before, Boerum Hill in particular. After winning her MacArthur genius award, Ms. Fernández told the New York Daily News that she had initially tried living in Manhattan, but found Brooklyn more inspiring. "It really felt like home immediately," Ms. Fernández said.

The same might be hard to say for 165 Bond Street, but it's hard to imagine the property falling into more capable hands.

kvelsey@observer.om

"They looked on Broadway, they looked on Bleecker," Prudential Douglas Elliman's Faith Hope Consolo told The Observer, but the tenant landed instead in a classic old-world showroom and corporate event space at 42 Bond Street. "This is in their DNA," said Ms. Consolo, who represented the tenant along with Joseph Aquino. The tenant took an entire 5,700-square-foot floor and wanted another.

The store is just two blocks from the perfumery's flagship, and, of course, has the vital Bond Street address. "They were in this neighborhood long before it was chic," Ms. Consolo said. "They were one of the first stores; now it's so arrived, so chic."

Indeed, the new space is next door to Ian Schrager's wannabe star magnet, 40 Bond Street.

lkusisto@observer.com 

Jennifer Gould Keil reports that Smith and the gang have settled on a five-bedroom at 25 Bond, the slightly less famous condo on the starchitect-studded street. The penthouse occupies
the entire top floor of the BKSK-designed building, just across the street from Ian Schrager and Herzog & DeMuron's 40 Bond Street. There are six-and-a-half bathrooms, four fireplaces, brass elevators and ample wall space for the art lover. (Is Will an art lover? Who cares! A photo of the model apartment shows one of Richard Prince nurses and a Warhol Mao, so he can pretend, at least.)

Smith will be in town for the shooting of Men in Black 3.

According to StreetEasy, the unit, one of only nine in the building, had been asking $19.5 million since March 2009 and slipped off the market just over a month ago.

Gould Keil's spies tell of a feverish apartment hunt:

Smith had his minions scour the streets of Manhattan for months, visiting buildings including 152 Franklin St. in TriBeCa and 54 Bond St. before settling on 25 Bond St. We hear that one woman he hired from Los Angeles would sometimes just fly in for a few hours, visit one apartment, then turn around and fly right back to the West Coast.

So we can cross Smith off our list of unknown buyers at 54 Bond. Maybe 48 Bond would have been more to his liking, had it been on the market at the time.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Chuck Close, who moved in in 2008, is among the new neighbors. Perhaps he could help you paint your new apartment--not that the exquisitely designed Deborah Berke interiors need it.

SLIDESHOW:What Else But a Sleek Triplex on Bond Street?

realestate@observer.com

Like the distilled, airy boutiques (Belhaus, United Nude) popping up on Bond, developers became curators of design for the sumptuously rich. The Herzog & de Meuron-designed 40 Bond Street is a dazzler of green glass and cast-aluminum graffiti rising up and tangling like wisteria vines. Two doors down is Deborah Berke's pared-down vision of modern revival.

In the future, we'll visit Bond and recall, for better or worse, this decade's delirious architecture, its equally delirious prices and, above all, its genre of choice, the luxury condominium.

VIEW SLIDESHOW > THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE: BLING ON BOND

The proposed designations include Webster Hall. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has pushed for the 1887 banquet hall-cum-music venue to get protective status, much to the dismay of Webster Hall’s owner Unity Gallega, The New York Times reported. The Times quoted Lisi de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the Landmarks Commission, who said that the company had opposed designation at last October’s hearing.

Another item up for designation after over a decade of community lobbying is the Fiske-Terrace Midwood Park Historic District. Last Oct. 12, blocks of the adjacent Brooklyn neighborhoods—bounded by Foster and Ocean avenues, Avenue H and the subway tracks of the B and Q trains—moved one step closer to designation when the LPC held a long-awaited public hearing.

Probably the most controversial item of all will be a hearing on the extension of the NoHo Historic District. NoHo first got protective status in 1999, and a separate NoHo East parcel was designated in 2003. But a core section of the neighborhood recommended for protection–running from East 4th Street to Bond Street and Bowery to Lafayette–has been excluded.

NoHo is one of the Historic District Council’s “neighborhoods at risk” and one of the six suffering from what they call an “under-designation” dilemma, meaning the “boundaries were too narrowly and arbitrarily drawn to provide full protection for the traditional neighborhoods.”

Even if the March 18 hearing goes well, the proposed extension of the NoHo district over Bond, Great Jones, and East 4th streets between Lafayette and Bowery has a final vote hurdle before the LPC gives it protective status. And then it needs to pass the City Council.

Eleven units have closed at Ian Schrager and Aby Rosen’s highly anticipated condominium project, according to city records. The seller on these deals has been listed as 40 Bond Street Partners, LLC, and the closing prices range from $2.8 million to $10.5 million.

The development has 28 units total, but four have been combined into two mega-units, according to the sales office. The residences went on the market in early 2006.

Bond Street is rapidly becoming a condo haven. Accompanying 40 Bond on the same cobblestone block is the Deborah Berke-designed project at 48 Bond Street. And, as The Observer reported in June, self-storage king Adam Gordon purchased 41-43 Bond Street and has plans to develop a nine-story Steven Harris-designed condominium at the location.

Self-storage king Adam Gordon recently told The Observer he plans to break ground on a nine-story condominium at 41-43 Bond Street later this year. Mr. Gordon’s Adam Gordon Holdings closed on the buildings located at that address earlier this week for $7.7 million, according to city records.

“I decided to go forward with the project because I really think that the cast-iron and terra cotta architecture and cobblestone streets make Bond Street unique,” Mr. Gordon told The Observer.

The block of Bond Street between the Bowery and Lafayette Street is rapidly becoming a designer condo haven. Mr. Gordon’s development will sit across the street from Ian Schrager’s 40 Bond and down the block from the Deborah Burke-designed condos at 48 Bond.

“We don’t have a name yet,” Mr. Gordon said. “But Steven Harris Architects is responsible for the design.”

41-43 Bond Street is not the only property on the block that Mr. Gordon snatched up recently. He also bought the Bouwerie Lane Theater at 54 Bond Street. He intends to make the landmarked building his home after he unloads his current spread at 92 Jane Street, which is on the market for $14.9 million.