Manhattan Transfers

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Televangelists sell New York pad

Televangelist Creflo Dollar Sells Manhattan Condo

You can watch Creflo Dollar and his wife Taffi spreading the Word of God on TV seven days a week, but one place you won’t see the televangelists any more is at their 25 Columbus Circle condo.

The Dollars, preachers of the prosperity gospel and leaders of Georgia-based World Changers Church, have sold the two-bedroom condo on the 67th floor of the Time Warner Center for $3.75 million, according to city records. Read More

Dizzying Designs

One57

One57 In the Flesh

Leaving the Building Congress luncheon today, The Observer looked up to notice something we had never seen on the Midtown skyline before: One57! Garry Barnett’s Central Park-towering apartment building is now totally a part of the city skyline, unavoidably peeking down on Columbus Circle. Read More

Occupy Wall Street

Protest art!

Why Do Vendors Get Tents in Parks and Not Occupy Wall Street?

Robert Lederman, a crusading artist and a bit of crank who was a frequent antagonist of Mayor Giuliani, thinks the Bloomberg administration is being two-faced in expelling the Occupy Wall Street protestors tents from Zuccotti Park. He points to tents set up for holiday markets as the unjust, commercial expropriation of public space.

The holiday vendors have permits, of course, and a portion of their proceeds goes to the parks they occupy, so there appears to be a public good here, whatever your opinion of overpriced tchokes. Mr. Lederman has his own agenda, as he has run afoul of the city for trying to sell art in parks without permits. Still, his thoughts, which he just emailed around, are intriguing in light of last night’s events. Read More

Machers

To the ramparts. (Matt Chaban)

Kind of Blue: Joe Moinian Lives the 3 Columbus Circle Dream

The sun was glistening off the blue glass of 3 Columbus Circle last Thursday. A clutch of nattily dressed real estate executives standing on the 19th floor terrace had to squint against the strong light, reflecting off the high-tech carapace of the building formerly known as 1775 Broadway. Once the headquarters of Newsweek, and before that General Motors, the building began life in 1928 as a sturdy Art Deco brick box towering over Columbus Circle. One of the biggest buildings in the city at the time, it was a show of emerging industrial might in the heart of Manhattan.

But that was before GM moved to the other end of 59th Street, erecting its glass and marble monolith. That was before the arrival of the Trump International, the Time Warner Center and the Apple store on Fifth Avenue. Glass has become big business across the city, where brick and steel still sometimes rules—the Empire State Building is still our most recognizable landmark. Glass was what Joe Moinian, the Iranian-Jewish developer, former cook and now master of some five million prime square feet, decided to go with, then. It was the boom-boom new millennium: Why tear down a perfectly serviceable building when you could simply sheath it in a slick new suit, ask those $100-per-square-foot rents (the standard for a top-of-the-line tower) and cash the checks? Read More

The Power Builder

Location: This is a horribly anxious time to be in New York real estate, especially if you’re one of the city’s biggest builders. What keeps you up at night?

Mr. Sciame: I like to say that I sleep like a baby: I sleep for two hours and I cry for two hours. Only kidding. Read More

Hearst Closes Quickly on Another Columbus Circle Property

Hearst has added yet one more building to its growing arsenal around Columbus Circle.

The publishing behemoth recently closed on 811 Ninth Avenue for $17.1 million, according to city records. Lightning quick would be appropriate terminology for how rapidly this deal went down: Hearst went to contract and closed on the 21,500-square-foot property on Read More