The Qatari Prime Minister, despite being everyone’s favorite character in the drama of the New York’s luxury real estate market, is not the buyer of the $90 million penthouse at One57, according to Gary Barnett.
Mr. Barnett, the president of Extell Development, told The Wall Street Journal that the rumors, though rampant, were false. Read More
You can’t always get what you want, but it seems that Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani finally got what he needed (and if anyone can be said to need a massive apartment, it’s a man with two wives and 15 children). After courting co-op board after co-op board, Mr. Hamad has finally found a home, according to the New York Post. And not just any home, but the $90 penthouse at One57, which is poised to set the record for most expensive condo ever sold. Read More
Last night, The Observer got a glimpse of the super-tall residential tower Gary Barnett has planned for Broadway and 57th Street, just one block away from his already very tall One57.
Our good friends at Curbed picked up on this and were brilliant enough to photoshop the two onto the same skyline. It is quite the striking image, but not quite complete.
After all, rival 432 Park is already underway—and looking for more investors, if you’re interested, as The Journal revealed yesterday—so we figured, what the hey, let’s put them all together.
Welcome to your new skyline, circa 2015. Read More
Blind item: Which architecture firm displayed a mind-boggling model for a skyscraper that may well never be built, at least in this lovely form, on the corner of Broadway and 57th Street for Gary Barnett? The model was on display last night inside one of the firm’s downtown projects, which is all The Observer can say lest we give the devilish designers away. Read More
If only Gary “The Best” Barnett were editing The Times, the Gray Lady wouldn’t have buried the lede.
“I think the story got a little carried away,” Mr. Barnett told The Observer by phone this afternoon. He was referring to a report in today’s Times that Extell, Mr. Barnett’s development company, had sold the penthouse at his 1,005-foot One57 luxury tower for somewhere in the neighborhood of $90 million to $100 million.
We asked how—and why—the sale had been kept under wraps for a few of months now, even as the price was raised from $98 million to $115 million in the face of the sale of Sandy Weill’s $88 million spread at 15 Central Park West. “We wanted to tie the two together,” he said, “the penthouse announcement and the fact that we’re 50 percent sold. We thought 50 percent would be the big news, but shows what we know.”
As though he doesn’t know exactly what he is doing.
Still, Mr. Barnett has a point: The Times totally ignored (downplayed) the 50-percent-sold news, not mentioning it only once. (See Correction below.)
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This is now officially the most-watched development in all of Manhattan.
As Extell’s One57 climbs skyward, so do the prices, with the penthouse now asking an astronomic $110 million. Christian de Portzamparc, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect behind the project, discussed the inspiration for the tallest residential tower in the city with the International Business Times, where he revealed new details about the project as well as (and more importantly) new renderings. Read More
It turns out the EB-5 visa has won fans beyond Atlantic Yards, where Bruce Ratner has been trying to use the program to gin up funds for his prefabulous apartment towers.
Over the past four years, developers in the New York area have raised upwards of $1 billion through the visas-for-cash program, according to an investigation in The Times. During that period, EB-5 applications across the country have nearly quadrupled, to 3,800, as the Obama administration has been promoting the program strongly. Read More
Extell closed on a $700 million construction loan from a tier one lender syndicate led by Bank of America and consisting of funds from Bank of America, Banco Santander S.A., Abu Dhabi International Bank, Capital One and the Bank of Nova Scotia for its massive mixed-use development at 157 West 57th Street.
Bank of America will act as administrative agent for the mammoth tower, known simply as One57, that is currently rising between Sixth and Seventh avenues, across the street from Carnegie Hall. Extell has had the site for years, said a spokesperson, but construction on the hulking residential asset only began this summer. Read More
Woah, One57! Extell’s bombastic tower is already known for astronomical prices, including $98 million penthouses and a
Not everyone is so sure that Extell will be able to sell units with their optimistic prices, however. “There’s nothing currently in the marketplace to substantiate those dollars” Jacqueline Urgo, the president of Marketing Directors told The Real Read More
Gary Barnett continues to bulldoze his way across the city. Just last week, his Extell Development unveiled plans for a new tower at Riverside South; found a partner for a stalled 50-story hotel near Times Square; and secured $700 million in financing from Abu Dhabi toward One57, the condo-hotel tower on West 57th Street that will be the tallest, and likely most expensive, when it is completed. As if that were not enough, the developer has begun work just down the block on another of its long-simmering projects. Read More
