Code and Theory's Brandon Ralph with wife Adriana Biasi

“God, have you ever walked into a meeting and thought, This is not going to go well?” Code and Theory founder and creative director Brandon Ralph moaned. “That’s what it was like when we went to pitch to The Daily Beast.”

Sitting with him in his 5th floor SoHo offices, it was easy to imagine what the handsome and lanky 33-year-old was talking about. The Observer had come in to meet with the man who had been hand-picked by Tina Brown, Anna Wintour, Peter Brant, and Jason Binn to create their online platforms. With long, dark, wavy hair; leather bracelets; and a penchant for John Varvatos; Mr. Ralph looked more the part of a hip New York restaurateur.

He was quite press-shy: his only major interview since he co-founded his company in 2001 was with Ad Week, and he obliquely referred to not being happy with the results. In addition, some recent layoffs at Code and Theory had attracted unwanted attention by MediaBistro’s Agency Spy, leading Mr. Ralph to be even more reticent in front of a recorder than usual. So yeah, after five minutes in Mr. Ralph’s office, we actually could visualize a meeting that wasn’t going well.

“They were trying out four different design teams, and I think we were the fifth,” Mr. Ralph told The Observer of his first meeting with Ms. Brown’s staff. “We only had two days to prepare specs, and the whole presentation, people were just checking their watches.”

As they were about to be ushered out, a deus ex machina descended in the form of a bomb threat, forcing the whole building to evacuate. Somehow, Mr. Ralph and Ms. Brown were separated from the rest of their respective teams, and ended up at Cookshop on 10th Avenue, where they drank coffee and connected.

“We just sat at a coffee table, talking about designs and different approaches to the site,” Mr Ralph told The Observer, still incredulous over the series of events. “People kept asking how it went. I told everyone it was ‘very strange, but then very intimate.’”

“Twenty minutes later, we got a phone call telling us we were hired.”
But Ms. Brown and Mr. Ralph didn’t immediately see eye to eye on how to approach the digital news site’s layout. When Code and Theory presented a mock-up using gibberish—a standard design practice—the Newsweek editor demanded to see actual content in its place.

“We ended up having to create a new site mock-up every single day through the launch,” He grimaced. What he learned from the exercise was that his design couldn’t rest on sexy photos; it had to have energy even on a slow news day.

Ms. Brown remembered her first scuffles with Mr. Ralph as well. “He wasn’t used to clients saying they were coming down to the studio to sit in front of the screen and try stuff out,” she told The Observer. “He freaked out at first, then realized how fun it is to marry news adrenaline and digital design.”

Ms. Brown and Mr. Ralph still keep in touch. He refers to the media mogul as one of his greatest teachers. She, meanwhile, gushes about some of Mr. Ralph’s other impressive qualities.

“Brandon’s a heartthrob,” she told The Observer. “Every single woman in the office is a bit in love with him.”

Tina Brown’s colleagues aren’t the only ones vulnerable to Mr. Ralph’s charms. He and Lenny Kravitz became close personal friends after Code and Theory redesigned his web site and filmed and edited two of Mr. Kravitz’s music videos.

“I invited him and his wife down to New Orleans to visit me,” Mr. Kravitz told The Observer. “He’s brilliant designer and a great thinker and a great friend. He’s inspiring. We’re constantly emailing each other things, like photos of camera gear, architecture, art. We like to bounce things to each other. He’s got this amazing eye, for photography and design and everything.”

Mr. Ralph’s LennyKravitz.com is a fresh-looking aggregator of web content about the artist, one that employs bold hieroglyphics and symbols where there otherwise would be titles. Such a heavily accessorized look is risky these days, but somehow, it works—especially considering the rock personality it reflects.

The offices of Code and Theory

“Code and Theory’s sites get attention for disruption,” said Nicholas Daniel-Richards, former CTO of the company. “Making something that’s completely different from what you’d expect might not even make sense at first. Then the industry takes notice and starts trying to do the same.”
The difference between Mr. Ralph’s shop and the larger agencies, Mr. Daniel-Richards told The Observer, is that the big firms will churn out “a very efficient German machine, like a Mercedes: very powerful, with perfect craftsmanship, but no personal touches. And then you have these alternatives like an Aston Martin, which are creative and funky, and have soul. That’s Brandon.”

Code and Theory’s name has become synonymous with old media’s more innovative forays into new media. The most recent example would be last month’s launch of Jason Binn’s 1%-er magazine, DuJour, which sought to create a unique web entity separate from but associated with print. For the project, Mr. Ralph came up with the idea of having the site resemble the physical product: it begins at the cover, and readers have to flip through pages of content, like they would on an iPad (or an actual paper product).

“It was this insight I had,” Mr. Ralph recalled. “No matter how old a magazine is, or if it’s at your house or a dentist’s office...you’ll go from cover to cover.” So Mr. Ralph created a “focused” digital product that didn’t show the top news stories of the day.

When first viewing the DuJour website, readers might be confused by the cover photo and lack of a scrolling content bar. But once the user is accustomed to the unconventional design, the images pop, the stories breathe and the overall effect is uncluttered and refreshing.

“We’re not showing you 100 things on every page, like some websites that have all these links that scream, ‘Please, look at me!’” Mr. Ralph said. “I mean I think that works for websites that need to be very timely,” he amended quickly. (He did design the layout for the scream-worthy TMZ.com, after all). “But for a magazine that needs to be very luxurious, we told the editors, ‘Invest in your content. Users will scroll.’ ”

For Vogue.com’s 2010 overhaul, the challenge was to modernize the site’s color way and typefaces and create a brand-specific social community. In a response that typified reviews among the fashion set, Women’s Wear Daily wrote: “Love the oversize features carousel and the locking navigation bar! A beautiful redesign work by (once again) Code and Theory.”

For the record, Vogue.com is more than happy with the results, editor Caroline Palmer told The Observer. The “relaunch was one of our brand’s most important recent initiatives, making it essential that we collaborate with the right agency. Now that we’ve worked closely with Brandon and his team for more than two years, it’s clear to us that they are one of the top agencies in their field.”

That doesn’t mean Mr. Ralph and company will work for any media entity with a blank check. Without naming names, he told The Observer, “We’ll tell clients we want to work with them, but we don’t think they should do this project, because it’s set up to fail.”

Bossing around big names is a far cry from the firm’s humble beginnings 11 years ago, when Mr. Ralph opened up shop out of his Lower East Side apartment with childhood friend Dan Gardner. The two had $500 to their names.

They had grown up on Long Island, and spent time working in the dot com age with smaller, online agencies before being asked to create the digital department of a traditional ad firm, Draft. When Ralph and Gardner got the opportunity to strike out on their own, they went for it. One of their first jobs was creating a site for Sony using Flash Video Player.

Today, they employ more than 100 people at Code and Theory, which Mr. Ralph stressed, was another kind of collaborative process. “There are creative people who have moved into the strategy group, and creatives who have taught themselves how to be engineers.”

“Everyone here is a Swiss army knife,” he boasted.

Like many arty types that have taken the corporate route, Mr. Ralph—who also dabbles in interior design, fashion, and photography—worries that he’s sold out his craft. Meanwhile, his colleagues sometimes wonder whether they can possibly execute his outside-the-box ideas, according to a former employee.

“Brandon has the ideas, but then there are the realities of the situation, and they’re not always feasible,” said the employee. “You can’t expect people to work 110 hours a week and not get burned out with the crushing hours and a volatile employer, but that’s how they get things done there.”
In January of last year, Code and Theory helped recreate Interview magazine’s web site, and then the two companies traded spaces. The design shop’s new space is more than 20,000 square feet, all the better to branch into print design and TV commercials, Mr. Ralph’s next moves.

After we had turned our recorder off and packed up, Mr. Ralph offered to give us the grand tour, culminating in his favorite place in the never-ending floor of Code and Theory. Leading us through a side door into a cramped, almost hidden corridor lined with two stories of books, he flung open the heavy wooden doors to the library: a gigantic room with thousands of books left over from the Interview days.

“Now if we could only figure out the Dewey Decimal System they were using when they organized everything,” Mr. Ralph grinned.

Mr. Ralph shook his head at the archaic line of code that had created order from the massive amount of data. It was a design he could respect, and for the first time since we had walked into his office, he looked genuinely happy.

Mr Kravitz. (Getty Images)

The Observer recently nabbed a few minutes with one of the stars of The Hunger Games--no, not Jennifer Lawrence! Lenny Kravitz, who plays Ms. Lawrence's stylist, told The Observer that he'd been cast on the basis of a similarly nurturing role in the 2009 film Precious. "People are seeing: he's serious about acting!," he told us. He wants to play "hardcore badass" characters next.

Was Mr. Kravitz a Hunger Games fan prior to his involvement in the franchise? "Not personally. But people are hardcore. They're not playing!"

What did he first notice when watching the film back? "The references, the sets, the lighting, the film-stock look. The main thing I notice is 'This film is good.'"

"People are expecting a blockbuster," he told us. "It's like the Beatles." If the Beatles comparing themselves to Jesus was a bridge too far, this seemed apropos. His publicist-mandated time was up.

This has been a blog post about The Hunger Games.

The cavalcade of models — including familiar face Agyness Deyn — all had white paint heaped on their hair, and walked in airy looks that came in waves according to color. 

"The colors were so beautiful," Mr. McGinley told The Observer after the show. He agreed with us about the sci-fi feel of some of the clothes, which was set up by the foreboding balloon structure. "There were some pieces that kind of reminded me of Blade Runner that I liked."

But perhaps the accentuating detail that made the strongest impression was the music: a churning series of start-stop blippy and booming dub that would attack over and over again. Memorable, to be sure, though polarizing may be the better way to describe it. So we talked to M.I.A., sonic provocateur par excellence, about what she thought of the soundtrack.

"It just seemed like a Die Antwoord CD on repeat, yeah, with a bit of dubstep thrown in," Maya told us in her thick English accent. "But it was interesting. It's definitely juxtaposed with what the style of the clothing was. It was a good contradiction, I thought."

Suffice it to say that Alexander Wang makes sure the music at his show — much like the show itself — brings something different to the table. 

A few years ago, I was at a kicking Grammy Awards party in a Los Angeles mansion hosted by music company EMI, which was then in the midst of a ditched merger dance with Warner Music. As a journalist covering the merger, I was on the List, and my privileged status granted me access to the cordoned-off VVIP level, which featured better drinks, bigger shrimp and prettier people. Then, to my consternation, I discovered that there was somewhere even better--a VVVIP third level so rarified that even the top execs of EMI and Warner had trouble talking their way in. It was accessible only via a staircase guarded by burly dudes with earpieces.

As the suits disappeared up that stairway and I was left behind, all the free drinks and Hollywood dazzle in the room seemed subpar and desolate. I made it my mission to get past that velvet rope to see what was happening upstairs. Eventually, there was some kind of random distraction and I climbed over a banister and made my way up. Once there, I grabbed a drink, tried to blend in and found ... not much of anything. About 30 famous people were sitting around--Courtney Love, Lenny Kravitz and billionaire Paul Allen among them. But beyond its specialness, there was really nothing special about it. I went up to Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran and said hello. He smiled wanly.

The lesson, of course, was that the real thrill was in the act of getting in somewhere that I wasn't allowed and didn't belong. The risk was that I would be tapped on the shoulder and denied or, worse, tossed to the curb.

Now a proposed law is making its way to the California Senate that threatens to take all the fun out of  party crashing by making it illegal, punishable by a $1,000 fine or six months in jail. The state law, introduced by an assemblyman whose district includes the Rose Bowl and who used to work in the entertainment industry, has been greeted outside of California with the usual hoots--is this what those West Coast looneybirds are wasting their time on while their economy is teetering on collapse, their school system is in ruin and their health care is a disaster? My first instinct on hearing of this was to think of a whole new category of Hollywood-party-related legislation, covering everything from annoying cell phone banter to bad outfits to overpriced valet parking. And yet the proposal is not as ludicrous as it might sound. Unlike New York, where people have a grudging respect for personal space (because there is so little of it), the Los Angeles events-and-party industrial complex has a long history of people who don't understand boundaries, from paparazzi and TMZ camera crews to celebrity-crazed fans. This has been a boon for private security forces, but apparently this new law stems from an incident at the Screen Actors Guild Awards last year, where some unruly people snuck in and were arrested but there was no form of trespass as defined by California law that they could be easily charged with. Apparently, these laws predate Brangelina and date to an age when disputes about rural land were at issue. For example, there are forms of trespass defined under the law for cutting down wood, leaving gates open or carrying away oysters (presumably not off of a buffet table).

I spoke with Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (Democrat from Pasadena), and he made a reasoned argument for the change, calling it "a flaw in the law that needed to be corrected." But I asked him if he'd ever known the shivery thrill of sneaking into a party where he didn't belong--the equivalent of asking if he'd ever inhaled. "I've never broken into an awards show," Mr. Portantino said. Ah, that explains it.

It’s been almost a year, and those two listings are being handed this week to what’s now Mr. Schnabel’s third brokerage. The units that once cost $59 million together will be only $41 million: The penthouse is asking $22 million, down $2 million from its most recent asking price; the duplex is asking $19 million, down $4 million.

“Those were just the numbers that came about; there wasn’t a lot of discussion,” Peter McCuen, the latest listing broker, said Monday. “There wasn’t anything so in-depth about it, really.”

Mr. Schnabel’s 10,306-square-foot duplex and penthouse belong to a new class of super-luxury real estate in this super-gloomy Manhattan: The eight-digit recession special. Considering the old Chupi tags, you’re practically saving $18 million. Step right up.

Sadly, sometimes even the most splendiferous price cuts can’t help. It’s been three months since a hedge fund manager cut her duplex at 1030 Fifth Avenue to $34.5 million (the original tag was $47.5 million), and two months since the price of Brooke Astor’s thoroughbred 14-room duplex at 778 Park Avenue went to $34 million (from $46 million).

While dealing with the global crisis, Astor’s son, Anthony D. Marshall, has had to fight charges that he stole from his mother while she was ill; he has pleaded not guilty.

“I understand the economy. I understand what people are thinking. I understand that people are being protective, and they’re probably right,” his wife, Charlene, said this week. “While we would love to see it sell, we certainly understand what our whole country is going through right now.” There won’t be any more price cuts, she said: “It probably would have sold like hotcakes at $46 million any other time, don’t you think?”

That question aside—and only a small amount of New York apartments have ever sold for over $45 million—the thornier problem is how far high-end luxury real estate has yet to fall from its old bubbly heights, back when a man like Len Blavatnik would buy a townhouse for $31.25 million, then a 14-room Fifth Avenue co-op for $27.5 million, then a second townhouse for $50 million.

Earlier this month, Jane Holzer, once the Warhol star known as Baby Jane, cut the price of her penthouse at the Volney on East 74th Street to $16.9 million, down from its original $22.5 million tag.

“It’s starting to look like a value, and if you don’t look like a value right now, you’re dead in the water,” the broker Kirk Henckels, who has seen the apartment, said this week. “She put her life and soul in this apartment. It was her baby. Oh! No pun intended.”

But Ms. Holzer’s cuts weren’t as deep as Victor “Tory” Kiam III’s. Last Tuesday, Mr. Kiam, the son of the late Remington razor mogul, cut the price of his unrenovated 630 Park Avenue penthouse in half, from $17 million to $8.5 million.

In the meantime, Mr. Kiam has a sprawl in 1133 Fifth Avenue that he bought for $24 million in 2006. That year, Tim Grumbacher, the executive chairman and ex-CEO of the Bon-Ton department store chain, bought a $10.9 million apartment in the same building; Bon-Ton’s stock has since gone from $25 to $1.33 a share. His co-op went back on the market last May with a $19.5 million tag, which went down to $17.5 million, then $15 million, and then $10.9 million—the purchase price.

Late last week, the apartment went to contract, according to listing brokerage Brown Harris Stevens. Depending on the final sales price, and on how much renovations cost, his family will have lost a serious amount of money on a serious apartment in an Emery Roth–built co-op.

Tracking the falling price tags of apartments like Mr. Grumbacher’s is like watching the end of the world: Bruce Lisman, the former co-head of global equities for Bear Stearns, has cut his sprawl at 923 Fifth Avenue from $22.5 million to $19.75 million to $18.95 million to $16.75 million. Meanwhile, Palazzo Chupi’s triplex penthouse went from $32 million to $29.5 million to $24 million to $22 million.

But some price-cutters still have their dignity. The middle-aged rocker Lenny Kravitz, according to his broker, is now refusing to compromise with potential buyers because of his series of hefty cuts at 30 Crosby Street.

“It’s not negotiable at all at this price; it’s a great deal,” said Andrea Wohl Lucas, who has been listing the penthouse duplex. In November, Mr. Kravitz’s tag arrived at $14,995,000, down from its $19.5 million high point in 2007. “It will sell,” she said.

mabelson@observer.com

Lizzie Grubman will now manage her clients in addition to publicizing them. [P6] 

Ashley Dupré is reportedly in talks with the Los Angeles production company Handprint Entertainment and MTV to do a dating-based reality series in which she may be  "the next  Tila Tequila," says an unnamed source. [E! Online]

Stoical Exes: Sarah Larson isn't mad about being dumped by George Clooney; she's thankful for the career opportunities she's gotten out of dating him! [London Telegraph]

Kirsten Dunst was seen making out with Beatrice Inn DJ Matt Creed. [P6]

The Other Woman: A former stripper who also had an affair with A-Rod says she's rooting for Mrs. Rodriguez. [Boston Herald via Daily Intel] 

Speaking of New York, Bruce Wasserstein has reportedly moved on from wife Claude to a "young Asian beauty." [NY Daily News]  

Yet it turns out there’s a downside to superstar proximity. In October 2004, poppy hard rock guitarist Lenny Kravitz was sued for $333,849.77 on account of the “catastrophic water damage” his toilet plumbing caused downstairs neighbor Joel Disend, a retired finance executive.

The musician’s lavatory problems must have been traumatizing, because Mr. Disend has left their hip loft building, 30 Crosby Street. Last month, city records show, he sold off his 4,164-square-foot apartment for $6.2 million.

On the bright side, that’s a nice markup from the $2.84 million he reportedly paid in 2001.

According to the suit three years ago, Mr. Kravitz somehow allowed his “commode to become blocked, clogged and congested with various materials” sometime that August, doing well over $300,000 in destruction below.

Two more neighbors’ insurance companies have sued Mr. Kravitz for $9,387.87 and $457,339.11. One neighbor happens to be board president Dan Pelson. “[O]ur insurance companies went after his INSURANCE COMPANY (not the unit owner) for reimbursement, or subrogation, as lawyers call it,” he wrote The Observer. “The unit owners are not involved in any way.”

Either way, it’s not much money at all compared to Mr. Kravitz’s current $19.5 million asking price for his 5,818-square-foot penthouse. Reportedly it was decorated by his nine-person design squad, so its decor includes beaded curtains and fake elephant tusks. Yet it’s lingered on and off the market for years.

Mr. Disend’s buyers, banker Do Woo and Ae-Ri Kim, probably won’t have any trouble in the new place, considering that they’re no strangers to high-end real estate. Just last year, they sold a Fifth Avenue apartment for over $9.6 million, and a year earlier they paid $12.25 million for an apartment in the Carhart House off Fifth.

Even with Courtney Love out of the building, a buyer has not yet scooped up theater chairman Laurence Isaacson's maisonette at 30 Crosby Street. Now, the price has just been reduced from $6.45 million to $5.995 million.

Over the years, Mr. Isaacson has tried to keep up with the Soho building's high-profile residents, as he told The Observer last March.

Since coming on the market earlier this year, celebrities like Kate Hudson and Billy Joel taken a walk through this lavish apartment, which was designed by Benjamin Noriega Ortiz. (He also did Lenny's place upstairs).

Considering that the Piano Man is now looking at a $12.9 million townhouse in Brooklyn Heights, he probably won't be at tomorrow's open house.

- Michael Calderone

Now, 30 Crosby Street is slowly settling into a new identity as one of many nameless, faceless loft buildings housing the merely rich. Hedge-funders, lawyers and bankers are at the door, clutching recent bonus winnings. Wealthy retirees are knocking, looking for quiet glamour close to shopping and restaurants.

The old guard—least of all troubled rocker and widow to modern-rock history Courtney Love—didn’t go quietly.

“The last time I saw her, she went out strapped, handcuffed to a gurney, screaming and kicking,” said Laurence Isaacson, a neighbor in the building.

Since then she has sold her apartment—to a retired couple.

Mr. Isaacson, the acclaimed British theater director who is also the co-owner of the West Village restaurant Paris Commune, is leaving, too.

“I should put the price up now that she’s left,” Mr. Isaacson said.

When the 13-unit building was a new development and its sales office opened in 2000, Denzel Washington, Claudia Schiffer, Rosie O’Donnell, Cindy Crawford and Sean (Diddy) Combs were all interested. Liv Tyler purchased a sponsor unit, but due to the building’s growing publicity (or perhaps notoriety) as a celebrity dorm, she traded it for low-key townhouse living in the West Village. It was prescient of her: When Ben Stiller used a third-floor model unit as a location in his 2001 film Zoolander, the building arguably completed its journey toward self-parody.

“We had tons of celebrities trying to buy in there,” said Edward Baquero, one of the building’s developers. “We had people trying to persuade us to kind of break contracts” with other celebrities to let them buy in instead.

A far cry from the scene there last week. Mr. Isaacson had the real-estate brokers and wealthy prospective buyers take off their shoes before coming in. It was slushy out in the streets of Soho, and Mr. Isaacson had delicate pine floors to protect.

These stocking-footed visitors were not celebrities. (Though on separate occasions, according to Mr. Isaacson, celebrities like Billy Joel and Kate Hudson have come by to take a look—which is probably the exception that proves the rule.)

Because of the particular kind of fame it briefly enjoyed, 30 Crosby is in rehab now. In fact, more than a third of the original residents are preparing to leave the building they made famous.

Lenny Kravitz is (again) redecorating his duplex penthouse before it re-enters the market; Mr. Isaacson is moving to a nearby luxury condominium; the building’s other penthouse is on the market for $13.7 million; and a fifth-floor spread is now asking $6.485 million.

And finally, Ms. Love’s fourth-floor apartment is under contract. It took long enough.

In March 2001, Ms. Love dropped $2.6 million on a 4,200-square-foot loft. Tabloids quickly seized upon her bizarre behavior—she reportedly wandered up and down the cobblestone street, begging for cigarettes and looking into parked car windows. With her air conditioning turned off, Ms. Love would fan herself on the windowsill, smoking cigarettes and pitching the butts several stories down into a street filled with gawkers and well-heeled shoppers. Neil Strauss famously documented a three-day “slumber party” at 30 Crosby for Rolling Stone, which consisted primarily of Ms. Love watching Boogie Nights repeatedly while performing acupuncture on herself in the squalid setting.

“I managed to fall over Courtney Love in the lobby,” Mr. Isaacson told The Observer. “It was when she was opening her case in the lobby and searching for—she had her underwear all over the lobby—something she desperately needed.” He chose not to elaborate.

In December 2004, Ms. Love put the apartment on the market for $6 million after slightly more than three years in the building, with the final asking price dropping to $5.25 million a little over a year later. The apartment was listed with Wilbur Gonzalez of the Corcoran Group.

Also in 2004, Mercury Capital Corporation, a mortgage company, filed suit against Ms. Love for lack of payment in hopes of foreclosing on the apartment. (Ms. Love is currently out of the country and could not be reached for comment).

Finally, in 2006, Ms. Love—who already had moved to Los Angeles to be with her daughter, Frances Bean—caught a break.

On Jan. 27, an offer was accepted, with the contract signed on Feb. 10, according to a shared system used by real-estate brokers. Although the New York Post reported a contract signed six days later, things didn’t actually run so smoothly.

“They couldn’t find Courtney or someone to sign it,” said Holly Parker of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who represented the buyers. “It was in the paper that it was signed—we were so not done at that point.

“It wasn’t a plus that it was her apartment,” Ms. Parker added, describing the thinking of her clients, the retired couple relocating from the suburbs who bought Ms. Love’s apartment. “They’re older, and they don’t know her music or anything. The condition that it was left in wasn’t great. She left it kind of filthy.”

Said another downtown luxury broker eager to sell other apartments suddenly open in 30 Crosby: “With her being out of the building, it will be easier to sell an apartment.” The broker believes that apartment seekers were hesitant to commit with tenants like Ms. Love still lurking. “The building had a negative connotation.”

Days of Wine and Lawsuits

Every raucous party has to come to an end sometime.

In 2001—long before the current selling frenzy—30 Crosby opened its doors as one of the first full-service buildings catering to the downtown celebrity set. (This was years before Richard Meier’s glass-and-steel fishbowl took shape nearby in the far West Village.)

Not long ago, this little-trafficked cobblestone block between Broome and Grand streets would have been far better known for scurrying rats than high-end condo buyers (complete with entourages).

“We actually located the property in 1998,” said Mr. Baquero, now managing director of Coalco, a real-estate investment firm that owns several properties, including Diane von Furstenberg’s West 12th Street townhouse and studio.

In the late 1990’s, Mr. Baquero developed the former 19th-century paper factory along with Stephen Touhey, while both were partners at Landmark Development.

“At the time, it was considered the other side of Soho,” said Mr. Baquero. “A lot of my peers didn’t even want to get out of the car.”

Because the Loft was not on a boutique-friendly block across Broadway, Mr. Baquero had to stop by 30 to 40 banks in search of financing.

“We kept hearing no and people didn’t believe what we were doing,” said Mr. Baquero, who broke ground in the summer of 1999. “We did the first real concierge-and-doorman [building] downtown. We made this huge 30,000-capacity wine cellar.”

For private dinners and wine tastings, residents can reserve the Enoteca room, which features a long table, limestone fireplace, vaulted ceilings and a concrete spittoon. And for the New Age contingent—and what celebrity doesn’t have a New Age side?—an aromatherapy system pumped various scents into the building’s lobby.

These little star-friendly niceties aside, Mr. Baquero’s relationship with his buyers went south quickly. Not long after the building sold out, Mr. Baquero and his partner found themselves the target of a lawsuit numbering in the millions of dollars, lodged by the star-addled condo board and laced with charges of negligence, fraud and breach of contract. The developers have countersued, and litigation is still pending years after the fact.

Ms. Love was among the first to actually close a deal in the building. At the time, Mr. Baquero admits, he thought Ms. Love “might bring negative attention,” but another famous rock star who was mulling over an $8 million purchase of the building’s two duplex penthouses assuaged the developer’s fears.

“Lenny Kravitz said, ‘If I was concerned, I’d tell you,’” said Mr. Baquero. “He said that she was a really nice person—that the public persona is different from reality.

“Although it seems like she did do some crazy things subsequent of that comment,” Mr. Baquero added. “That was early on, when he was contemplating buying the place. Lenny visited the place maybe 30 times before he actually bought it.” (Mr. Kravitz once went up to the penthouse at night to judge whether it was suitable enough to enjoy a glass of champagne.)

“[Mr. Kravitz] took a very personal involvement in the building,” said Mr. Baquero. “He saw it when it was just a rooftop. I expressed to him what we were doing. He got it. He’s a great guy.”

But if Ms. Love’s difficulties in the building were soon to be tabloid-fodder, so were Mr. Kravitz’s.

First it was his elaborate design for the place: the giant swing with the rabbit-fur seat; the glass staircase; the glass-encased terrace with a hot tub; the undulating walls; the ostrich-feather-covered lamps.

Then it was the rock-star parties with guests like Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones.

Finally, Mr. Kravitz made the tabloids when his toilet overflowed. (They’re just like us!) Two insurance companies filed lawsuits over damages resulting from the accident. Bolt Inc. chairman Daniel Pelson and retired executive Joel Disend both claimed damages to their apartments, at $9,387.87 and $333,849, respectively.

Home, sweet home, right? But Mr. Kravitz very quickly began to toy with the notion of selling the place, and the protracted attempt to make a deal has been the dominant news from him at 30 Crosby Street for years now, at one point tantalizing the real-estate obsessed when he toured a $50 million townhouse on the Upper East Side.

In July 2002, Mr. Kravitz listed his apartment for a staggering $17 million; it was reduced a few times, most recently to $12.95 million. At one point in 2003, when the listing was also available as a high-priced rental, a recently divorced Nicole Kidman moved in while she waited for her apartment in a newer, hipper-sounding celebrity dormitory—the glass towers on Perry Street designed by Mr. Meier—to be finished up.

Earlier this year, Mr. Kravitz’s apartment was pulled off the market again. Was he deciding to stay?

“It’s temporarily off the market,” said Andrea Wohl Lucas, of the Corcoran Group, who had listed the apartment along with Bruce Lucas. According to Ms. Lucas, the apartment will be put back on the market in a few months, after Mr. Kravitz is done redecorating it. (Mr. Kravitz couldn’t be reached for comment).

But if wealthy buyers can’t wait for Mr. Kravitz to tone the place down for a less celebrity-worshipping buyer, the penthouse next-door is currently on the market for $13.7 million with Susan Wires, of Stribling and Associates.

Paresh Kanani, who already relocated with his family to London two years ago, first listed the penthouse for $14.95 million in April 2004. After next being reduced to $13.5 million, the price was raised slightly $13.7 million last October.

“A lot of people have confused this penthouse with Lenny Kravitz’s, because they couldn’t believe there would be two,” said Ms. Wires. “Aesthetically, it’s completely different. In my opinion, this is the better of the two penthouses.”

Although Ms. Wires said her clients really want to sell, the penthouse can also be had for $60,000 a month, currently the highest-priced rental in Manhattan.

The New 30 Crosby

During last week’s open house at Mr. Isaacson’s, the elevator traveled numerous times from the penthouse level down to the ground-floor maisonette. Although vastly different, Mr. Isaacson’s and Mr. Kravitz’s apartments have something in common: designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz.

Once inside, the initial feelings of warmth quickly turned to awe, after gazing upon the 82-foot-long mirrored wall, the columns limned in silver leaf, the large projection television that drops from the ceiling, and the signed letter from Queen Elizabeth adorning the wall.

This is not your average Manhattan apartment. And though, at 30 Crosby, it’s nothing out of the ordinary, we can expect the building to become just that in short order.

“I am quite a flamboyant creature,” said Mr. Isaacson. “When you have people like Lenny Kravitz in the building—and we’ve just lost Courtney Love—you have to hold your own.”

He did more than that.

“Lenny and I used the same designer,” said Mr. Isaacson. “I used him first. Lenny came down to see the work that Benjamin had done on my apartment.”

When Mr. Kravitz came downstairs, he got more than he bargained for.

“I showed him my dropdown TV/Cinema screen,” said Mr. Isaacson. “I showed him a DVD of Celine Dion. He thought the screen was sensational. He didn’t say much about Celine.”

“When I first met the owner about five years ago, he wanted something with a wow factor,” said Drew Glick, of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who sold the apartment to Mr. Isaacson for about $1.78 million in 2001. Now, Mr. Glick is listing it with his colleague Richard Ferrari. A co-exclusive, the apartment is also listed with Brian Babst and Daren Herzberg of the Corcoran Group.

“It was clear that this building would be unlike just about anything on the market,” said Mr. Glick.

Three thousand miles from his native England, Mr. Isaacson may not have the name recognition of Mr. Kravitz or Ms. Love, but his parties—which included members of the royal family—certainly kept up with 30 Crosby’s star-studded atmosphere.

“I have parties with very glamorous people, from princes to paupers,” said Mr. Isaacson, who also maintains posh homes in London, Portugal and on Fire Island. He also just closed on a $2.6 million apartment in André Balazs’s new development, One Kenmare Square, according to deed-transfer records.

At 30 Crosby, Mr. Isaacson’s apartment included three bedrooms and four baths. Showcased in Interior Design Magazine, the apartment features 13-foot ceilings, a metal and Lucite staircase, and a 400-square-foot garden (with lifelike plastic trees that provide the requisite verdure all year round).

However, one unique feature that Mr. Isaacson regularly used actually belongs to the entire building. Located just outside his apartment, Mr. Isaacson frequently held court in the Enoteca room, “feel[ing] very much like Richard III.”

“I think the type of person who buys it will be a creative person,” said Mr. Glick. “Or, these days, a hedge-fund person.”

But the Arrange-a-Room feature is sure to waste the most precious hours at work. Instead of simply gawking at floorplans, you can place pieces of furniture throughout the sprawling spreads, like this one at 30 Crosby Street.

Just try to imagine how Lenny Kravitz or Courtney Love, who have condos in the Soho building, might have set up their pads.

- Michael Calderone